ssian  Memoi 


^oultney  Bigelow 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


By  Poultney  Bigelow 

The  German  Emperor  and  His  Eastern  Neighbors. 

1890 

Paddles  and  Politics 

A  Canoe  Voyage  from  the  Black  Forest  to  the  Black  Sea 

Border  Land  of  Czar  and  Kaiser 

Studies  on  Both  Sides  of  the  Polish  Frontier 

Children  of  the  Nations 

A  Study  in  Modern  Colonization 

White  Man's  Africa 

A  Study  of  the  Different  South  African  States  Immedi- 
ately after  the  Jameson  Raid 

The  German  Struggle  for  Liberty 

A  History,  1806-1848,  in  4  Vols. 


Prussian    Memories 


1864-1914 


By 


Poultney  Bigelow,  M.A.,  F.R.G.S. 

Author    of    "History    of  the    German    Struggle    for    Liberty, 
1806-1848" 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 
Gbe    fmicfcerbocftet    press 

1915 


COPYRIGHT,  1915 

BY 
POULTNEY   BIGELOW 

Second  Impression 


•Cbe  ttnfcfecrbocfeer  prcsa,  Hew  Borfc 


3DD 
•X^.1) 

£.48 


B1 


1 


INTRODUCTORY 

[ETWEEN  the  time  of  penning  this  little 
book  and  securing  a  courageous  publisher, 
my  sixtieth  birthday  arrived  and  brought  me  into 
\  the  ranks  of  the  elders.  Henceforth  I  may  claim 

A^  the  right  to  be  reminiscent,  not  to  say  garrulous. 
I  have  crossed  the  ocean  ninety  times,  three  of  the 
trips  being  under  sail.  Four  times  have  I  circum- 
navigated the  globe — once  under  sail.  I  have  been 
in  three  shipwrecks  and  as  many  times  have  been 

%J  pronounced  dead  by  expensive  men  of  medicine. 
\  My  studies  have  drawn  me  to  every  tropical 

-Jf  colony,  and  my  travels  have  been  largely  afoot, 
on  horseback,  or  in  a  canoe.  My  adventures 
have  been  few  because  it  has  been  my  practice 
to  give  careful  study  to  the  history  of  the  coun- 
tries I  was  about  to  visit.  That  is  probably  one 
reason  why  my  dealings  with  natives  have  been 
uniformly  satisfactory — whether  in  Zululand  or 
Borneo;  China  or  New  Guinea;  the  Black  Sea  or 
Baltic.  Age  has  modified  my  views  on  many 
matters,  notably  on  the  relative  value  of  man  in 

211250 


iv  Introductory 

different  climates.  It  is  hard  for  me  to  see  that 
one  race  is  superior  to  another  save  for  a  short 
time  under  exceptional  conditions. 

Patriotism  is  based  largely  upon  the  conceit 
that  we  are  mysteriously  gifted  with  a  larger  share 
of  virtue  or  intelligence  than  has  been  given  to 
others;  that  we  must  conquer  other  countries,  in 
order  to  diffuse  our  wisdom  and  virtue;  that  we 
must  plague  them  with  missionaries  and  commer- 
cial travellers  until  the  happy  day  arrives  when 
all  shall  rest  happily  under  our  flag  and  the 
millennium  be  proclaimed. 

We  Americans  are  an  almost  offensively  patriotic 
people,  so  far  as  words  and  symbols  are  concerned. 
We  scatter  insults  and  missionaries  with  wasteful 
zeal  and  assume  that  our  high  opinion  of  ourselves 
is  shared  by  the  world  at  large.  Our  school 
children  learn  this  doctrine,  which  is  perpetuated 
by  our  colleges,  our  preachers,  our  papers,  and  our 
seekers  after  office.  We  have  admitted  negroes 
to  citizenship ;  yet  while  we  have  branded  as  unde- 
sirables the  disciples  of  Confucius,  our  slums  are 
crowded  with  immigrants  from  the  Mediterranean 
who  constitute  a  menace  to  our  political  future; 
and  we  bar  our  gates  against  the  Japanese,  who 
make  a  religion  of  cleanliness  and  whose  lives 
make  their  country  a  byword  for  chivalry.  We 


Introductory  v 

have  flaunted  in  the  face  of  Europe  a  so-called 
Monroe  Doctrine,  which  forbids  the  great  Powers 
from  introducing  stable  government  among  the 
Latin-American  States;  and  we  threaten  these 
Powers  with  war  if  they  take  steps  to  collect  their 
debts,  while  we  ourselves  do  nothing  to  command 
either  fear  or  sympathy  south  of  the  Rio  Grande. 

There  are  no  surprises  to  him  who  studies 
history  and  this  great  war  has  surprised  no  one 
save  those  who  seek  their  light  from  the  Priests 
of  Pacifism. 

The  United  States  has  been  on  the  verge  of  war, 
for  which  there  has  been  abundant  provocation 
with  Germany, — to  say  nothing  of  our  neighbours 
across  the  Pacific.  But  had  we  been  as  meek  as 
Belgium,  our  peril  could  be  none  the  less  real. 
We  are  a  country  piled  high  with  dollars  and  no 
one  to  guard  them.  England  so  far  has  acted  as 
our  big  brother  and  Germany  dares  make  no  move 
until  John  Bull  is  asleep.  We  should  have  a  per- 
manent peace  footing  of  one  million  men ;  and  these 
should  be  organized,  after  the  Swiss  method,  as  a 
force  of  reserves.  Every  voter  should  be  qualified 
to  take  his  share  in  the  defence  of  his  country, 
while  he  would  be  called  away  from  his  civil  pur- 
suits for  not  more  than  a  few  weeks  in  each  year. 

The  American  lad  who  can  not  read  and  write 


vi  Introductory 

and  shoot  and  ride  and  swim  and  do  his  soldier 
duty  should  be  barred  from  the  polls  and  his  name 
posted  in  public  places.  There  is  no  good  reason 
why  from  being  a  nation  of  "minute  men"  under 
Washington,  we  now  should  become  so  degenerate 
that  in  a  moment  of  national  danger  even  the 
graduates  of  our  naval  and  military  colleges  are 
forbidden  to  discuss  the  matter  for  fear  of  annoying 
our  enemy. 

Germany  has  her  plans  for  the  invasion  of  this 
country.  She  has  had  these  plans  for  a  number  of 
years  past,  and  I  have  been  called  visionary  each 
time  that  I  have  referred  to  the  matter.  It  is 
our  duty  to  be  ready,  for  when  Germany  makes 
her  raid  across  the  Atlantic  she  will  first  exhaust 
every  effort  to  secure  the  services  of  such  patriots 
of  the  type  of  William  Jennings  Bryan.  These 
"prophets  of  peace"  preach  peace  and  disarma- 
ment, and  when  their  talking  is  over  they  will 
disappear  with  the  money  from  their  lectures  and 
may  next  be  seen  on  the  Rhine  or  the  Danube 
carrying  in  their  buttonhole  a  Red  Eagle  order  of 
the  third  class. 

When  this  war  closes,  Europe  will  have  many 
soldiers  but  few  dollars;  and  no  nation  will  need 
those  dollars  more  than  Germany.  America  will 
have  billions  of  dollars  but  very  few  soldiers. 


Introductory  vii 

History  teaches  that  sentiment  counts  for  little 
in  war  and  diplomacy — but  it  is  a  soporific  for 
unthinking  voters.  In  these  past  twenty  years 
Imperial  Germany  has  loudly  proclaimed  her 
desire  for  peace,  yet  has  been  the  only  one  of  the 
great  Powers  to  decline  flatly  any  proposition 
looking  towards  either  disarmament  or  arbitration. 
She  has  feverishly  pushed  forward  a  naval  pro- 
gramme out  of  all  proportion  to  defensive  needs, 
and  in  her  diplomatic  intercourse  has  assumed 
more  and  more  the  tone  of  a  bully.  This  state- 
ment can  be  verified  by  any  one  who  will  take  the 
pains  to  read  the  interchange  of  letters  between 
the  cabinets  of  Berlin,  Paris,  and  London  during 
these  past  few  years. 

What  share  William  II.  has  had  in  this  crowning 
crime  I  know  not — for  I  have  not  seen  him  since 
1896. 

But  Court  is  not  everything  save  to  such  as  have 
never  been  there;  or,  have  known  but  one.  My 
business  is  to  be  an  American  and  the  business  of 
William  II.  is  to  be  a  German  Kaiser.  Towards 
him,  as  a  man,  I  feel  gratitude,  and  for  his  talents 
much  respect;  nor  am  I  conscious  of  having  ever 
uttered  in  word  or  print  anything  that  could  not 
be  repeated  in  his  hearing  and  with  profit  to  the 
listener. 


viii  Introductory 

Certain  Americans,  including  some  officers  of  the 
army  and  navy,  have  become  so  unbalanced  from 
once  appearing  at  the  Imperial  Court,  that  they 
are  now  pro-German,  and  they  feel  that  to  prove 
their  social  superiority,  they  must  fill  their  rooms 
with  Imperial  photographs.  But  a  little  wider 
experience  would  cure  this  malady. 

We  Americans  hold  that  Government  by  the 
people  means  Liberty  and  Justice.  This  is  not 
necessarily  true.  Democracy  gives  us  ten  thou- 
sand bosses,  each  one  more  costly  than  a  single 
average  monarch  of  Europe.  England  is  nominally 
a  monarchy.  Yet  in  London  the  American  can 
find  more  home  rule  and  common  law  justice 
than  in  New  York  or  Chicago.  For  my  part  I 
prefer  a  decent  despot  to  a  presidential  demagogue. 
There  are  no  more  popular  and  patriotic  repre- 
sentatives of  national  ideals  today  than  the  Kings 
of  Belgium,  England,  and  Italy,  while  each  has 
practically  less  political  power  than  the  American 
President.  Yet  each  is  nominally  ruler  by 
divine  right.  These  kings  work  for  the  nation's 
tomorrow,  while  our  presidents  must  work  for 
— votes! 

William  II.  is  popular  at  home,  and  the  fact 
that  he  is  so,  in  spite  of  having  inaugurated  a  war 
unexampled  for  trickery  and  barbarity,  shows  us 


Introductory  ix 

that  an  absolute  monarch,  by  skilfully  manipu- 
lating the  press,  the  university,  the  schools,  and 
the  vast  machinery  of  public  patronage,  can  in 
the  course  of  one  generation  produce  a  public 
sentiment  ready  to  condone  any  act  provided  it 
be  labelled  patriotic. 

It  has  been  the  favourite  toast  of  Academic 
Germany,  that  Martin  Luther  emancipated  the 
nation  from  intellectual  bondage.  It  will  hence- 
forth be  her  dubious  glory  that  after  these  centuries 
of  struggle  for  freedom  she  has  once  more  suc- 
cumbed to  the  dual  despotism  of  Pope  and  Kaiser. 

P.  B. 

MALDEN-ON-HUDSON,  September  23,  1915.  . 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

First  Impressions  of  Germany — Bonn — English 
and  American  Boys — Fights — Treatment 
of  Prussian  Soldiers  by  their  Officers — 
Beer-Soup  ......  I 

CHAPTER  II 

Prussian  Club — Gentleman — Imperial  Yachting 
— Sport  Unf  ashio  nable — Kiao  -  chao — A 
Colony  but  No  Colonists  10 

CHAPTER  III 

Prussian  Military  Success — 1864-1866 — Babels- 
berg — Bismarck — William  I. — Violation  of 
the  Constitution — Dread  of  Revolution — 
Popular  Forgiveness  after  Sadowa  .  .16 

CHAPTER  IV 

Schillbach — Potsdam — B  ismarck — Pushing   the 

German  Language — Colonial  Experience    .       25 

CHAPTER  V 

Family  Life  at  Schillbach' s — Hinzpeter — Palace 

Romps — First  Meeting  with  William  II.     .       34 


xii  Contents 

CHAPTER  VI 

PACE 

More  Palace  Play  Days — Hinzpeter  and  Carey 
— Frederick  the  Noble  and  Bismarck — Die 
Engldnderin  ......  43 

CHAPTER  VII 

Norwich  Academy — Yale — American  vs.  Ger- 
man Student — Return  to  Berlin — Bunsen 
— Ampthill — Bismarck  ....  55 

CHAPTER  VIII 

William  II.  Becomes  Emperor — Militarism — 
Virchow — German  Scholars  at  Court — 
Helmholtz  .  .  .  .  .  .66 

CHAPTER  IX 

Barnay — Booth — Art  in  Berlin — Imperial  In- 
fluence on  the  Stage  ....  76 

CHAPTER  X 

Berlin — Sewage  Disposal — Dr.  Koch — Arrest 
in  Dresden — Also  in  Munich — Law  Para- 
graphs— Cats — Kittens — Canals  .  .  85 

CHAPTER  XI 

Prussian  General   Staff — Real   Titles — Spies — 

Waldersee — Russia — Absolute  Monarchy  .       99 

CHAPTER  XII 

Manoeuvres  —  Mobilization  —  Wagner  —  Lord 

Roberts — Franz  Josef       .         .         .         .108 


Contents  xiii 

CHAPTER  XIII 

PAGE 

Naval   Activity — Admiral   Hornby — "Fighting 

Bob" — Colonial  Activity — Singapore         .     121 

CHAPTER  XIV 

Jameson — Kruger  Despatch — Spanish  War — 
Manila  —  Dewey —  Diedrichs  —  Chichester 
— Kiao-chao — Wei-Hai-Wei —  Seymour — 
Consul  at  Che-foo  .  .  .  .  .129 

CHAPTER  XV 
Colonial  Experience  in  German  New  Guinea     .     139 

CHAPTER  XVI 
Fukushima — The  Fool's  Revenge    .         .         .153 

CHAPTER  XVII 
Diplomacy:  German  American        .         .         .     160 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

Bismarck  and  William  II. — Herbert  Bismarck 

—Edward  VII 169 

CHAPTER  XIX 

Queen   Louise — German  Women  and  Men — 

Guelph  Family — Gmunden       .         .  179 

CHAPTER  XX 

Emigrants — German  Officials — "Blood  is  Thick- 
er than  Water" 191 


Prussian  Memories 


CHAPTER  I 

First  Impressions  of  Germany — Bonn — English 
and  American  Boys — Fights — Treatment  of 
Prussian  Soldiers  by  their  Officers — Beer-Soup. 

IT  was  in  1864,  when  I  was  eight  years  old,  that 
*  my  parents  sent  me  to  a  big  boarding-school 
at  Bonn  on  the  Rhine.  Prussia  was  in  that  year 
joined  with  Austria  in  a  war  against  Denmark,  but 
I  took  little  interest  then  in  the  fortunes  of  any 
country  save  my  own  where  the  great  Civil  War 
was  raging — filling  the  world  with  tales  of  fratri- 
cidal destruction,  the  echoes  of  which  horrified  even 
us  children  at  the  American  Embassy  in  Paris. 

Doctor  Kortegarn  was  headmaster;  and  the 
boys  were  half  English  and  half  American.  The 
most  interesting  feature  of  my  two  years  there  was 
a  succession  of  fights  between  the  English  and 
American  boys;  after  which  we  united  cordially 
whenever  anything  local  offered  a  more  attractive 


2  Prussian  Memories 

target  for  our  pugnacity.  Amongst  my  class- 
mates were  John  and  Andrew  Munroe,  sons  of 
the  great  Paris  banker  of  his  day ;  also  three  Riggs 
boys  of  Washington.  Halsey  Haight  of  New  York 
was  the  school  monitor,  the  model  boy  and  the 
only  one  who  had  a  room  to  himself.  As  the 
youngest  of  the  school  I  was  placed  under  his 
general  mentorship  and  recall  vividly  my  sense 
of  importance  in  being  permitted  to  associate 
familiarly  with  such  a  big  strong  handsome  fellow. 
In  parenthesis  and  at  the  risk  of  weakening  an 
orthodox  tradition,  I  cannot  recall  amongst  our 
little  band  of  a  hundred  Anglo-Americans  any 
instances  of  fagging  or  hazing  or  bullying  such 
as  would  seem  to  be  inseparable  from  life  at  a  big 
boarding-school,  at  least  as  portrayed  in  books. 
We  did  delight  in  hoisting  our  national  flag  at  the 
highest  point  of  some  tree  and  then  fighting  to 
maintain  it  there  until  our  clothes  were  in  tatters 
or  smeared  with  mud  and  blood.  Whether  Eng- 
land triumphed  oftener  than  the  United  States 
I  do  not  recall,  but  we  did  our  little  best  to  settle 
the  Alabama  Claims  out  of  court.  These  scrim- 
mages were  wholesome  things,  for  they  did  most 
drastically  determine  the  relative  position  of  every 
boy  in  that  school.  I  carried  away  warm  affection 
for  my  English  and  American  schoolmates,  but 


Early  Impressions  3 

for  some  reason  or  other  the  Prussian  boys  who 
came  only  for  the  day  classes  seemed  to  be  of 
another  species  in  the  human  family.  Yet  the 
German  walks  on  two  legs  like  ourselves ;  he  wears 
clothes,  he  passes  examinations,  he  is  chock-full 
of  book-knowledge,  and  trained  to  conventional 
forms  of  social  intercourse.  Reason  argues  that 
his  Kultur  is  magnificent,  but  we  boys  could  not 
reason,  and  I  was  drawn  to  those  who  would  play 
fair  and  fight  fair.  If  I  know  an  Englishman  at 
all,  I  know  him  through  and  through,  and  can 
trust  him  in  fair  weather  or  foul.  I  have  known 
hundreds  of  admirable  Germans  in  the  fifty  years 
that  have  clasped  since  the  days  of  Doctor  Kor- 
tegarn.  These  have  been  peasants  and  princes, 
priests  and  professors,  editors,  members  of  Par- 
liament, poets  and  painters,  and  chiefly  of  course 
officers  of  the  army  and  navy.  I  have  enjoyed 
their  society,  for  I  have  asked  little  in  return. 
Much  have  I  learned  from  them,  and  have  tried 
to  pay  back  a  part  of  my  debt  by  speaking  the 
truth  when  called  upon. 

In  the  British  or  American  service  a  man  is 
first  a  gentleman  and  then  an  officer;  on  the  Elbe 
and  the  Havel  it  is  otherwise.  There  my  friend 
is  first  an  officer  and  as  an  officer  his  honour  con- 
strains him  to  do  things  which  would  not  harmon- 


4  Prussian  Memories 

ize  with  the  conception  of  gentleman  as  framed  at 
West  Point  or  Woolwich. 

(/  It  was  late  when  I  reached  Bonn,  very  homesick. 
'  1  was  immediately  mothered  by  old  Frau  Professor 
Kortegarn  who  kissed  me  many  times  and  made 
me  still  more  unhappy  because  her  clothes  smelt 
musty  and  her  teeth  were  bad.  She  was  an  ogress 
in  my  childish  eyes,  for  I  had  come  straight  from 
the  caresses  of  a  fond  mother  famed,  even  in  the 
capital  of  beautiful  women,  for  her  abounding 
health  and  beauty. 

Frau  Professor  brought  me  in  to  supper  and  I 
went  as  the  child  in  the  fairy  story  whom  the  witch 
is  fattening  for  a  sinister  purpose.  Had  I  been 
brought  to  the  most  choice  of  feasts  my  appetite 
would  not  have  been  elastic,  but  a  mouthful 
revealed  that  I  was  tasting  for  the  first  time  in  my 
life  warm  beer-soup. 

Imagine,  you  mothers,  the  feelings  of  a  boy  of 
eight,  whose  meals  had  been  from  infancy  almost 
entirely  made  of  milk  fare  and  who  had  never 
tasted  beer  in  any  form,  suddenly  ordered  to  force 
down  a  tipple  whose  very  odour  was  offensive. 
The  dear  old  Frau  Professor  overwhelmed  me  with 
marks  of  affection.  I  could  not  then  understand 
her,  but  evidently  I  had  as  by  enchantment  been 
metamorphosed  into  a  cog  of  the  great  Prussian 


Beer-Soup  5 

machine.  She  knew  that  the  beer-soup  was  good 
because  it  was  prescribed  by  a  Prussian  institu- 
tion, and  she  argued  that  whatever  resisted  its 
benevolent  intentions,  must  be  punished  immedi- 
ately and  convincingly.  At  the  time  I  did  not 
know  how  symptomatic  of  Prussian  education  in 
general  was  this  patient  struggle  over  a  plate  of 
beer-soup.  With  my  present  experience  I  tremble 
at  the  thought  of  what  might  have  happened  had 
Herr  Doktor  intervened.  But  my  phenomenal 
good  fortune  commenced  early;  and  as  there  were 
no  witnesses  and  Frau  Professor  was  perhaps  no 
less  sleepy  than  myself  and  willing  to  give  me  the 
benefit  of  the  doubt,  for  when  I  made  a  dramatic 
move  to  take  in  a  second  dose  she  put  me  to  bed, 
and  beer-soup  has  disgusted  me  ever  since. 

It  is  good  for  man  to  surrender  his  will  and  his 
reason  for  short  periods,  as  for  instance  when  he 
goes  aboard  ship  and  knows  that  the  skipper  can 
hang  him  at  the  yardarm  and  explain  it  after- 
wards ;  or  as  a  volunteer  for  war  under  a  comman- 
der whose  argument  is  a  firing-squad  at  sunrise; 
or  as  a  man  goes  on  the  operating-table  or  into  a 
sanatorium.  No  man  is  fit  to  lead  others  who  has 
not  himself  submitted  to  discipline.  Before  we 
have  experienced  this  quasi-slavery  we  talk  much 
against  it,  and  we  talk  still  more  against  it  when 


6  Prussian  Memories 

we  have  submitted  too  long.  To  me  it  was  a 
violent  wrench,  this  becoming  a  Prussian  cog, 
after  having  shared  the  companionship  of  a  father 
who  habitually  discussed  with  us  all  our  childish 
theses  and  even  in  the  most  crowded  periods  of  his 
diplomatic  life  found  time  to  hear  us  repeat  our 
lessons  and  explain  what  to  us  was  obscure.  No 
children  could  have  stood  in  greater  awe  of  their 
father  than  we  of  ours;  he  was  to  us  the  embodi- 
ment not  only  of  physical  manliness  and  dignity, 
but  also  of  patience,  unselfishness,  and  loving  care. 
I  cannot  recall  his  ever  having  punished  any  of  his 
large  family  in  any  more  drastic  manner  than  by 
an  expression  of  disapproval  or  a  sarcastic  refer- 
ence to  our  behaviour.  That  was  enough  to 
convert  our  tempestuous  nursery  into  a  tropical 
doldrum , — for  maybe  a  full  half -hour .  My  mother 
frequently  threatened  volumes  of  calamity,  but 
these  she  always  forgot  even  more  quickly  than 
we  did. 

The  second  night  at  Kortegarn's  all  the  boys 
before  retiring  stood  up  in  two  long  lines  for  in- 
spection and  prayers.  Never  before  having  been 
called  upon  to  say  my  prayers  otherwise  than  on 
my  knees,  I  was  embarrassed  when  the  Herr  Doktor 
loudly  intoned  the  German  Vater  Unser ;  and, 
innocently  imagining  that  the  most  respectful 


Prussian  Discipline  7 

attitude  would  be  that  of  one  gazing  towards  Our 
Father's  celestial  home,  I  raised  my  homesick 
eyes  ecstatically  towards  a  bunch  of  flies  on  the 
ceiling,  wishing  that  I  had  their  wings  and  a  know- 
ledge of  the  road  to  Paris  when  whack!  came  a 
heavy  blow  on  one  side  of  my  head  which  would 
have  floored  me  had  not  my  juvenile  neighbour 
acted  as  buttress.  The  teacher  sharply  rebuked 
me  for  gazing  upward,  and  I  suppose  this  also  went 
to  the  throne  of  the  merciful  Father  along  with 
the  rest  of  Dr.  Kortegarn's  Vater  Unser. 

Today  that  blow  on  the  head  seems  a  brutal 
if  not  stupid  exercise  of  power,  nor  can  I  recall 
amongst  the  many  educators  I  have  known  in  the 
English-speaking  world  any  who  could  have  so 
disturbed  in  cold  blood  a  religious  exercise.  It 
was  my  first  appearance  at  the  roll-call;  I  was  only 
eight,  ignorant  of  the  language  and  presumably 
of  the  customs,  and  yet  for  the  simple  mistake  of 
gazing  upward  instead  of  downward  during  the 
Lord's  Prayer  my  most  conscientious  and  efficient 
master  struck  me  a  blow  hard  enough  to  fell  a 
bullock,  and  no  doubt  glowed  with  inner  satisfac- 
tion at  one  more  duty  done,  one  more  step  onward 
in  the  march  that  was  spreading  Prussian  educa- 
tional methods  to  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

By  this  time  so  completely  had  I  become  a 


8  Prussian  Memories 

Prussian  cog  that  no  resentment  was  felt  by  me 
against  the  punisher — it  was  as  though  I  smarted 
under  the  blow  of  a  stone  rolling  down  the  moun- 
tain, a  branch  falling  from  aloft,  or  the  part  of  some 
machine  against  which  I  had  inadvertently  stum- 
bled. There  must  be  some  virtue  in  the  manner  of 
Prussian  educators,  else  how  could  it  be  so  uni- 
versally accepted  and  even  commended  by  them? 
Personally,  I  do  not  like  it,  nor  have  I  been  able 
to  preserve  respect  for  those  exercising  this  method 
of  suasion. 

At  Kortegarn's  I  learned  to  appreciate  the 
wholly  impersonal  brutality  of  the  conscientious 
Prussian  drill-master,  and  in  later  years  I  accepted 
the  existing  order  of  things  as  being  probably  well 
adapted  to  the  particular  people  over  whom  this 
method  is  mainly  applied. 

One  day  in  the  West  Indies,  a  German  naval 
officer  took  me  aboard  his  ship  while  the  gunnery 
drill  was  on.  The  men  appeared  to  be  alert  and  I 
listened  with  interest  to  the  conversation  of  my 
host  as  we  strolled  from  gun  to  gun.  In  the  midst 
of  a  sentence  he  stopped  and  drawing  his  hand 
back  as  one  about  to  send  a  ball  from  centre  field 
to  home  base  he  administered  a  blow  on  the  cheek 
of  a  gunner  that  recalled  vividly  my  experience 
at  Kortegarn's  religious  exercises.  The  blow  was 


Prussian  Discipline  9 

accompanied  by  a  few  sharp  words.  The  officer 
then  smiled  pleasantly  and  went  on  with  his 
conversation  as  might  a  man  who  had  demolished 
a  mosquito  or  removed  a  fly  from  his  beer-mug. 

The  American  who  lives  in  Germany  should 
not  come  home  too  often;  otherwise  it  would 
disturb  his  habits  as  a  Prussian  cog.  The  first 
time  I  saw  a  Prussian  soldier  struck  not  only  by 
an  officer  but  by  a  non.  com.,  my  mind  instantly 
pictured  the  fate  of  the  guilty  parties  were  this 
to  happen  in  any  English-  or  French-speaking 
regiment. 

However,  I  am  here  to  point  out  the  difference 
between  people  of  different  Kultur  and  not  to  de- 
termine which  is  the  better  of  the  two — for  them. 
The  wise  man  makes  a  note  of  what  he  sees  in  his 
travels  and  seeks  reasons  and  not  ridicule  for 
difference  in  customs. 


CHAPTER  II 

Prussian  Club  —  Gentleman — Imperial  Yachting — 
Sport  Unfashionable — Kiao-chao — A  Colony 
but  no  Colonists. 

OOME  of  my  German  friends  have  shown  irri- 
^  tation  when  I  pointed  out  sympathetically 
that  the  conception  of  a  gentleman  was  not  at 
home  in  Prussia  but  had  to  be  imported  in  a  muti- 
lated form.  Here  again  I  am  at  a  loss  to  analyse 
so  subtle  a  matter,  but  the  curious  will  note  that 
such  clubs  as  the  "Athenaeum"  and  "Reform" 
in  London,  or  the  "Century"  and  "Union"  in 
New  York,  not  only  are  lacking  in  Germany,  but 
are  inconceivable  in  Berlin,  Munich,  or  Cologne. 
A  club  presupposes  personal  dignity  and  equality. 
Imagine  if  you  can  a  club  in  New  York  or  London 
where  every  member  had  to  rise  and  salute  when- 
ever a  person  of  superior  rank  passed  through  the 
rooms.  The  very  conditions  that  make  Prussia 
the  strongest  of  military  nations  make  a  club 
in  our  sense  of  the  word  an  impossibility,  because 

10 


Prussian  Clubs  n 

only  gentlemen  can  use  all  things  in  common  and 
yet  not  abuse  this  privilege.  Of  course  German 
officers  have  their  messes  or  "Casinos,"  and  in  a 
military  capital  like  Berlin  a  certain  proportion 
of  civilians,  mainly  diplomats,  are  admitted  to 
temporary  membership,  but  those  of  the  English- 
speaking  world  soon  weary  of  the  military  etiquette 
that  hampers  social  freedom  and,  while  they  may 
leave  their  names  on  the  club  list,  they  look  else- 
where for  intellectual  relaxation. 

Germany  has  an  immense  Yacht  Club,  the 
"Imperial"  of  Kiel,  and  as  a  life-member  I  once 
attempted  to  pay  a  visit  to  its  rooms.  It  was 
during  the  festivities  connected  with  the  opening 
of  the  Baltic  and  North  Sea  Canal  when  the  har- 
bour was  crowded  with  English  and  American 
yachts  no  less  than  warships  of  all  nations.  So  I 
paddled  ashore  in  my  canoe  Caribee  dressed  in 
white  flannels  and  the  official  cap  of  the  club. 
But  I  had  no  sooner  landed  at  the  float  than  a 
sentry  challenged  me  and  told  me  to  clear  out, 
this  being  government  property,  and  only  for 
naval  officers.  My  being  a  member  of  the  Im- 
perial Yacht  Club  left  him  cold,  and  as  I  despaired 
of  achieving  my  object  in  any  other  way  I  induced 
him  to  escort  me  to  the  residence  of  the  Com- 
mander, and  through  him  I  finally  succeeded  in 


12  Prussian  Memories 

gazing  at  the  club-rooms  which  were  in  a  building 
of  the  Naval  Academy. 

This  was  an  interesting  revelation  to  me  who 
had  known  the  club  mainly  through  its  beautiful 
annual  volume  and  its  membership  list  which 
includes  many  notable  English  and  American 
yachtsmen.  But  evidently  it  never  occurred  to 
a  Prussian  sentry  that  any  civilian  would  have 
the  impudence  to  invade  the  club  premises  of 
officers  in  uniform. 

That  was  my  first — indeed  my  last — visit ;  and 
when  Germans  use  the  word  yacht-club  in  con- 
nection with  that  of  New  York  and  Cowes  they 
speak  the  same  language  of  externals  but  spiritu- 
ally they  are  as  far  apart  as  the  clubs  of  Pall 
Mall  and  the  Casinos  of  Potsdam  and  Berlin. 

Let  me  not  be  suspected  of  minimizing  the 
splendid  work  done  for  German  yachting  by  the 
Emperor's  Yacht  Club.  He  saw  the  work  of 
England  in  this  matter  and  brought  the  name  and 
machinery  to  Kiel,  and  he  has  made  a  large  por- 
tion of  his  prosperous  subjects  give  much  time  to 
healthy  life  on  the  water,  all  of  which  is  good  if 
it  travels  along  natural  lines.  But  a  sport  which 
has  to  be  patronized  or  pushed  along  by  Imperial 
influence  cannot  be  regarded  as  so  popular  as  the 
sports  which  are  rooted  in  the  habits  and  customs 


Absence  of  Sport  13 

of  our  own  people.  William  II.  may  succeed 
where  others  have  failed ;  but,  personally,  it  would 
surprise  me  to  learn  that  the  New  York  Yacht 
Club  had  found  a  rival  in  the  Baltic,  as  well  as 
on  the  Solent.  William  II.  and  his  brother  Prince 
Henry  have  been  ever  keen  sportsmen,  thanks  to 
their  experience  in  England.  They  have  been 
pained  by  the  absence  of  sport  in  Germany  and 
have  done  their  utmost  to  counteract  this  indiffer- 
ence on  the  part  of  their  countrymen.  The  Prus- 
sian is  apt  to  be  sluggish  and  lazy,  although  he 
works  with  docility  when  he  must;  and  this  re- 
creation is  apt  to  take  the  form  of  a  stroll  towards 
a  convenient  beer-garden.  The  Prussian  officer 
takes  no  interest  in  sport  outside  of  that  connected 
with  his  profession.  The  corps  student  imitates 
the  officer  and  considers  sword  exercise  best  fitted 
to  his  needs.  All  that  is  fashionable  frowns  down 
upon  mere  athletic  exercises  and  no  wonder  then 
that  the  Goddess  of  sport  has  to  seek  her  devotees 
amongst  schoolboys,  shopkeepers,  or  mechanics. 
When  Prince  Henry  took  command  in  the  Far 
East  after  the  conquest  of  Kiao-chao  (in  1897),  his 
intimate  knowledge  of  English  colonial  life  led 
him  to  introduce  English  athletic  sports  amongst 
the  new  officials — civil  and  military.  It  was  a 
failure;  for  so  soon  as  his  own  personal  impulse 


14  Prussian  Memories 

was  removed,  the  prehistoric  Prussian  habits  re- 
asserted themselves,  and  when  I  visited  that  place 
only  one  year  later  it  would  have  been  difficult 
to  picture  a  community  more  physically  depressed 
from  too  much  beer  and  too  little  sport. 

Here  again  I  called  on  the  Governor,  a  naval 
officer,  and  found  that  he  had  his  important  door 
reserved  for  officers,  and  his  less  important  door 
for  civilians  and  other  undesirables.  The  sentry 
warned  me  against  entering  at  the  important  door, 
but  at  the  risk  of  having  a  bullet  penetrate  not 
only  me  but  the  important  door  as  well,  I  made 
much  noise  at  the  forbidden  portal  and  secured 
access  to  his  Governorship  on  somewhat  the  same 
footing  as  I  had  entered  the  sacred  confines  of 
my  Imperial  Yacht  Club. 

This  exalted  but  painfully  conscientious  man 
was  whining  over  his  troubles,  for  there  was  noth- 
ing in  the  Prussian  drill-book  regulation  covering 
the  problems  of  a  de  facto  governor.  He  knew  how 
to  punish  a  bluejacket  guilty  of  having  a  spot  on 
his  uniform,  but  his  present  dilemma,  so  he  told 
me  with  tears  in  his  voice,  was  how  to  punish 
adequately  a  Chinese  coolie  who  had  used  a  bath- 
tub for  rinsing  dishes.  The  Governor's  wife  in 
almost  the  same  breath  was  pointing  out  to  me 
the  various  pieces  of  furniture  that  had  ungummed 


Kiao-chao  15 

themselves,  being  nothing  but  cheap  pine  stuff 
with  a  thin  veneer  to  make  them  look  like  oak 
and  mahogany.  The  Chinese  who  saw  this  and 
contrasted  it  with  their  own  splendid  cabinet  work 
needed  no  further  explanation  regarding  "made 
in  Germany." 

While  the  Governor  was  wailing  over  petty 
cases  which  should  have  been  summarily  dis- 
posed of  by  a  subaltern  or  inferior  court  officer, 
agents  for  great  German  commercial  houses  were 
living  like  tramps  in  most  inadequate  quarters, 
vainly  offering  their  assistance  in  the  creation  of 
a  new  colony.  But  so  far  from  receiving  encour- 
agement, his  Excellency  complained  bitterly  to  me 
at  the  intrusion  of  civilians.  His  dream  of  colonial 
Germany  was  a  Chinese  Potsdam,  where  all  the 
colonists  should  be  in  uniform  and  where  the 
official  eye  should  never  be  offended  by  the  sight 
of  mufti.  In  short  the  Prussian  colony  is  a  land 
where  all  are  welcome  excepting — colonists. 


CHAPTER  III 

Prussian  Military  Success — 1864-1866 — Babelsberg 
— Bismarck — William  I. — Violation  of  the  Con- 
stitution— Dread  of  Revolution — Popular  For- 
giveness after  Sadowa. 

ET  me  hasten  back  from  Kiao-chao  to  Kor- 
tegarn's  and  apologize  to  the  reader  for  the 
garrulity  and  discursiveness  incident  to  age  if  not 
to  wisdom. 

Two  great  wars  came  to  magnify  the  Kingdom 
of  William  I.,  during  my  days  at  Bonn,  but  the 
Rhine  province  was  populated  mainly  by  Ger- 
mans who  had  been  French  a  short  half-century 
before,  and  had  not  quite  decided  whether  Koel- 
nisches  Wasser  sounded  more  patriotic  than  eau 
de  Cologne.  If  you  asked  a  man  on  the  street  as 
to  his  nationality,  he  would  proudly  say  "I  am 
a  Rhinelander,"  and  if  you  called  him  a  Prussian, 
he  might  add  "Yes,  a  Muss-Preussen,"  or  Must- 
Prussian. 

The  German  who  now  proclaims  Deutschland 

16 


Prussia  and  South  Germany         17 

uber  Attes  does  not  like  to  be  reminded  of  the  fact 
that  his  Deutschland  is  a  thing  that  has  germinated 
overnight  and  may  not  stand  the  weather  of  the 
next  day.  South  Germany  has  a  historic  develop- 
ment wholly  distinct  from  the  States  in  the  North, 
and  in  1866  Bavaria  and  Hanover  were  righting 
against  the  Hohenzollerns  with  as  much  fierceness 
as  they  now  exercise  against  France  and  England. 

At  the  swearing  in  of  naval  recruits,  the  Emperor 
once  thought  fit  to  catechize  a  Bavarian  blue- 
jacket at  Kiel  in  regard  to  the  duties  of  a  loyal 
subject  and  more  particularly  his  readiness  to 
fight  the  common  enemy,  "And  who  is  the  com- 
mon enemy  ? "  asked  William  II.  "The  Prussian," 
answered  confidently  this  truthful  child  of  Munich. 

The  Emperor  is  said  to  have  laughed  long  and 
joyously,  but  the  rest  of  the  story  I  never  heard. 

The  War  of  1864,  called  the  Danish  War,  added 
large  tracts  to  Prussia  on  the  north-west;  and  the 
War  of  1866  added  still  more  in  territory,  but  as 
all  this  can  be  read  in  any  encyclopaedia  I  will  not 
waste  your  time  by  retailing  it  here. 

We  of  Kortegarn's,  for  reasons  I  have  sought 
in  vain,  were  at  that  time  wholly  anti-Prussian; 
and  we  never  missed  an  opportunity  of  running 
to  the  railway  station  and  showing  sympathy  with 
prisoners  of  war  fresh  from  the  battle-field.  One 


i8  Prussian  Memories 

day  we  carried  a  big  American  flag  and  the  prison- 
ers begged  each  a  piece  of  it  as  souvenir,  and 
soon  hundreds  of  them  had  badges  made  of  the 
star-spangled  banner  pinned  proudly  on  their 
white  uniforms,  and  they  cheered  us  and  George 
Washington  and  the  land  of  liberty  with  polyglot 
fervour,  all  of  which  is  curious  to  recall  today  when 
German  music-halls  ring  with  ribald  jests  over 
the  Lusitania  dead. 

American  liberty  sounded  real  in  those  days, 
for  the  memories  of  the  German  Revolution  in- 
flamed every  schoolboy  and  many  survivors  of 
'48  had  sought  in  America  the  liberty  that  was 
denied  them  at  home. 

The  American  Civil  War  was  glorified  by  Ger- 
man eyes  as  one  for  the  emancipation  of  a  people 
in  bondage;  and  as  Germans  had  never  seen  a 
negro  excepting  as  part  of  a  menagerie,  or  in  the 
highly  coloured  pages  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  they 
naturally  felt  that  there  was  close  enough  analogy 
between  Africans  on  a  Louisiana  plantation  and 
Berlin  University  students — all  clamouring  for 
political  freedom. 

In  1863,  Prussia  played  perhaps  the  most  ignoble 
r61e  in  her  military  history  up  to  that  time  by 
offering  to  assist  in  capturing  and  restoring  to  the 
Czar  the  Poles  who  sought  to  escape  from  his  then 


An  Ignoble  R61e  19 

very'harsh  administration.  The  houses  of  Roma- 
noff and  Hohenzollern  were  one  in  those  days  by 
consanguinity  and  unity  of  political  ideals.  The 
old  Emperor  William  visited  nowhere  with  pleasure 
excepting  at  the  Russian  Court,  for  it  was  only 
there  that  he  found  the  congenial  atmosphere  of 
absolute  monarchy  untainted  by  the  remotest  sus- 
picion of  ever  having  to  consult  constitutional  re- 
presentatives on  any  subject.  Good  old  William  I. 
never  forgave  his  people  the  crime  of  setting  up 
a  full-blown  modern  constitutional  government 
in  1848;  much  less  could  he  forget  their  impudence 
in  daring  to  offer  an  imperial  crown  to  his  brother, 
the  then  King  Frederick  William  IV.  He  could 
understand  a  crown  placed  on  his  own  head  by  his 
own  hands  as  by  those  of  God;  but  to  receive  the 
sacred  emblem  soiled  by  the  sanction  of  a  self- 
governing  body  of  free  Germans — that  was  to  him 
sacrilege  never  to  be  forgiven.  It  seemed  ever  a 
dreadful  yesterday  to  him  when  amid  the  hootings 
of  the  Berlin  people  he  had  been  forced  to  escape 
from  their  fury  in  disguise  and  find  refuge  with 
many  another  would-be  autocrat  of  that  day  under 
the  shadows  of  Westminster.  My  old  friend,  Ernst 
von  Bunsen,  whose  father  was  Prussian  Ambassa- 
dor in  London,  has  told  me  of  the  surprise  in  the 
household  on  answering  a  ring  at  the  doorbell 


20  Prussian  Memories 

early  one  morning  in  1848.  There  stood  the  heir 
to  the  Prussian  throne,  homeless  and  helpless  but 
for  the  generosity  of  a  free  country.  It  was  Ernst 
von  Bunsen's  duty  to  escort  his  Prince  during  the 
sight-seeing  of  this  enforced  exile,  but  I  failed  to 
extract  from  him  any  admission  that  this  pros- 
pective Emperor  took  interest  in  anything  English 
beyond  the  common  externals  of  the  average 
tourist.  The  marvellous  mechanism  in  the  great 
constitutional  machine  which  has  enabled  one 
little  island  to  radiate  the  blessings  of  civil  liberty, 
justice,  and  religious  toleration  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth;  England's  great  statesmen,  philanthropists, 
historians,  and  explorers — these  were  a  sealed 
book  to  William  I.  In  later  years,  George  von 
Bunsen,  brother  of  Ernst  of  London,  told  me  that 
to  this  Emperor  the  world  that  wore  no  uniform 
had  no  existence,  and  he  illustrated  this  by  saying 
that  when  Berlin  finally  erected  a  monument  to 
Germany's  great  poet,  Schiller,  and  begged  His 
Majesty  to  honour  the  occasion  by  his  presence, 
the  answer  was :  ' '  Schiller  ?  I  don't  remember  any 
such  name  among  my  officers!"  The  King  paid 
no  further  attention  to  the  matter,  and  only  those 
are  surprised  who  imagine  that  the  flowers  of 
Parnassus  can  bloom  in  the  barrack-yard  of 
Potsdam. 


William  I.  21 

William  I.  was  a  God-fearing,  conscientious 
prince  after  the  manner  of  the  Hohenzollern  tra- 
dition. He  was  simple  in  his  habits  and  from  the 
palace  to  the  field  of  war  made  but  slight  difference 
in  his  bed  and  board.  He  knew  his  officers  and 
cared  for  them  as  for  members  of  his  own  family, 
and  looked  into  cases  of  their  private  distress  as 
does  a  benevolent  squire  with  a  large  estate  and 
many  tenants.  The  Revolt  of  '48  was  a  nightmare 
to  him,  and  that  such  a  calamity  should  never 
happen  again  became  his  constant  preoccupation. 
He  is  the  father  of  the  present  Prussian  militar- 
ism— that  is  to  say,  a  thoroughly  loyal  and  un- 
questioning military  force  ready  to  be  turned 
against  the  common  enemy  or  the  Hanoverian 
or  v  clamorous  fellow-citizens  in  the  streets  of 
Berlin  or  in  ventures  beyond  the  seas. 

But  there  were  stormy  debates  in  the  Prussian 
parliament  and  the  King  found  himself  hampered 
for  want  of  money,  and  he  raged  inwardly  at  the 
thought  that  he,  a  Prussian  monarch,  could  have 
his  military  plans  checked  or  even  modified  by 
representatives  of  this  same  people  that  had 
chased  him  from  his  capital  in  1848.  The  Com- 
mons would  not  give  in,  and  in  1862  the  King 
decided  that  he  would  abdicate  rather  than  submit 
to  constitutional  limitations.  He  even  prepared 


22  Prussian  Memories 

a  written  paper  on  the  subject  and  then  hesitated; 
and  as  with  many  another  at  such  a  moment  the 
devil  appeared  in  the  form  of  a  friend,  and  this 
time  his  name  was  Bismarck.  The  King  was  pacing 
up  and  down  a  retired  walk  in  the  beautiful  English 
park  of  his  country  home,  Babelsberg,  when 
Mephistopheles  entered  and  bowed  to  his  Faust. 
The  situation  was  explained;  Bismarck  listened 
respectfully  and  gave  as  his  advice  that  the  abdi- 
cation manuscript  should  be  torn  up.  They  were 
standing  on  a  rustic  bridge  over  a  streamlet  trick- 
ling into  the  Havel,  and  as  the  pieces  fell  from  the 
King's  hand  the  Prime  Minister  carefully  picked 
them  up,  thus  unconsciously  symbolizing  the 
traditional  attitude  of  the  Prussian  Junker  to  his 
alms-giving  super-lord.  "But,"  said  the  King, 
"I  must  then  carry  on  the  government  without  a 
parliament,  and  where  can  I  find  a  minister  capa- 
ble of  doing  this?" 

Of  course  Bismarck  bowed;  the  bargain  was 
struck;  and  from  that  moment  the  two  conspirators 
worked  as  one  for  the  grandeur  of  the  Monarch  and 
his  Chancellor.  The  Commons  made  speeches  and 
passed  resolutions,  but  the  Cromwells  of  Prussia 
were  in  the  pay  of  their  King  and  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  people  were  turned  out-of-doors  and 
the  King  collected  taxes  as  usual  and  the  military 


Bismarck  23 

organization  was  amplified  and  strengthened  as 
has  been  abundantly  illustrated  by  subsequent 
events.  When  Prussia  tore  up  the  treaty  which 
bound  her  to  respect  the  neutrality  of  Belgium 
the  world  had  a  right  to  say  that  her  obligations 
to  an  alien  people  could  not  be  regarded  as  more 
sacred  than  those  which  the  King  had  sworn  to 
maintain  towards  his  own  subjects  and  which  he 
violated  in  1863. 

\f  But  Bismarck  knew,  if  his  King  did  not,  that 
the  people  would  always  forgive  a  monarch  who 
was  victorious  and  consequently  he  had  no  con- 
cern for  the  future  so  long  as  his  parliamentary 
methods  led  to  success  on  the  battle-field.  With 
the  victories  of  the  Danish  campaign,  Prussian 
indignation  against  Bismarck  perceptibly  softened, 
and  when  the  battle  of  Sadowa  gave  to  Prussia  the 
first  rank  in  a  Germanic  Brotherhood,  the  Iron 
Chancellor  received  ovations  and  the  people  forgot 
that  he  had  trampled  underfoot  the  only  consti- 
tutional liberties  they  had  ever  possessed.  After 
this  great  military  triumph,  the  new  House 
of  Representatives  cheerfully  forgave  the  past, 
voted  everything  Bismarck  wanted,  and  in  1870 
Prussia  found  herself  the  leader  of  a  German 
Federation,  which  worked  as  one  body  for  mili- 
tary purposes  and  which  Bismarck  and  his 


24  Prussian  Memories 

King  knew  to  be  superior  in  physical  power  to 
France. 

My  Kortegarn  days  closed  when  my  father 
resigned  his  post  at  the  Court  of  Napoleon  in  1867, 
and  I  did  not  see  Prussia  again  until  the  year 
1870,  but  that  must  come  in  another  chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Schillbach — Potsdam — Bismarck — Pushing  the  Ger- 
man Language — Colonial  Experience. 

IN  the  spring  of  1870  the  whole  family  was  united 
*  in  Germany  when  the  war  broke  out  that  was 
to  make  William  I.  Emperor,  upset  the  throne  of 
Napoleon,  diminish  France  materially,  but  develop 
on  her  soil  resources  spiritual  and  political  un- 
dreamed of  by  those  who  mourned  most  at  the  loss 
of  Alsace  and  Lorraine. 

As  happens  commonly,  public  opinion  was  wrong 
and  the  few  initiated  spoke  in  vain.  The  press  of 
England  and  the  United  States  counted  upon 
French  victories  and  my  father's  friends  instantly 
wrote  warning  him  not  to  be  caught  in  the  war 
zone  when  the  French  troops  made  their  triumphal 
entry  into  Berlin.  To  these  kindly  meant  moni- 
tions he  answered  by  renting  an  apartment  in  the 
Hohenzollernstrasse,  and  by  placing  me  in  the 
family  of  a  learned  professor  of  Latin  at  Potsdam 
where  I  spent  two  happy  years.  There  were  five 

25 


26  Prussian  Memories 

children  in  this  estimable  family  and  as  we  played 
together  constantly  when  not  asleep  or  at  our 
studies  I  soon  acquired  familiarity  with  German 
both  classical  and  colloquial  and  I  strongly  urge 
English-speaking  parents  to  give  their  children  at 
least  one  year  of  uninterrupted  intercourse  in  a 
family  where  they  may  acquire  not  only  a  foreign 
language  but  another  national  point  of  view.  In 
parenthesis  it  may  be  worth  noting  by  parents 
with  prospective  college  boys,  that  I  knew  easily 
more  German  and  French  than  any  professor  at 
Yale  in  my  day; — and  Latin  as  well,  so  far  as  the 
tutors  are  concerned,  who  did  much  to  disgust 
us  with  Horace  and  Juvenal.  My  classmates 
habitually  cheated  the  Latin  tutor  by  reading  the 
translation  from  between  the  lines  of  the  text,  and 
this  must  have  been  condoned  by  the  faculty  for 
no  tutor  of  my  day  ever  asked  a  student  to  read 
from  a  page  not  previously  illuminated  by  his  own 
— the  student's — pencillings. 

Professor  Schillbach  never  troubled  me  with  a 
Latin  dictionary  but  made  me  memorize  metrical 
rules  of  grammar  which  I  can  still  repeat,  and 
long  passages  from  the  poets  which  he  subsequently 
discussed  with  me  as  you  or  I  would  if  teaching 
English  to  a  foreigner.  We  took  long  walks,  our 
third  consisting  of  either  Virgil  or  Horace,  merely 


Professor  Schillbach  27 

the  text,  from  which  I  would  translate  at  sight  and 
he  discuss.  He  also  made  me  write  him  letters  in 
Latin.  In  short  he  taught  me  by  a  thoroughly 
common-sense  method  and  Latin  soon  became  to 
me  a  living  tongue. 

Dear  Professor  Schillbach  taught  French  at  the 
Potsdam  Gymnasium  in  addition  to  Latin,  and 
like  most  Germans  who  have  learned  their  French 
in  Germany  he  was  very  proud  of  his  accent.  He 
never  suspected  that  French  and  English  had  been 
with  me  interchangeable  languages,  and  therefore 
when  he  accompanied  me  to  Switzerland  after  the 
war  he  prepared  me  carefully  for  the  enthusiastic 
reception  which  he  doubted  not  would  be  accorded 
him  by  his  brother  Germans  of  Alsace  so  recently 
emancipated  from  the  yoke  of  the  French  Empire. 
But  his  usual  sunny  spirits  were  a  trifle  dashed 
even  before  reaching  Strasburg  by  finding  our- 
selves in  a  compartment  with  brother-subjects  of 
Prussia  who  yet  talked  politics  in  French  and 
spoke  freely  of  ces  sales  Prussiens.  My  dear 
Professor  attempted  a  historical  expose  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire  in  the  days  of  Louis  XIV., 
but  the  torrent  of  voluble  Alsatian  French  com- 
pletely carried  him  off  his  linguistic  legs,  and  he 
could  recall  nothing  in  either  Ahn  or  Ollendorf 
suited  to  this  Gallic  eruption,  which  lasted  until 


28  Prussian  Memories 

we  emerged  upon  the  Strasburg  platform,  whence 
we  sought  our  way  on  foot  to  the  Cathedral  and 
the  ruins  of  the  great  Public  Library. 

In  the  cool  of  the  streets  my  dear  old  mentor 
recovered  himself  and  protested  to  me  most  ener- 
getically against  the  language  of  his  French  fellow- 
passengers,  but,  added  he  reassuringly,  "You  will 
soon  see  that  the  country  is  German  at  heart," 
and  in  this  spirit  he  accosted  a  bourgeois  with  a 
polite  request  for  information;  but  so  far  from 
receiving  a  polite  answer  the  bourgeois  turned 
from  him  with  a  scowl  and  a  mumbling  of  the  lips. 
This  happened  a  second  time,  and  then  even  the 
good  Professor  thought  it  wise  to  drop  the  subject 
of  Alsatian  fidelity.  This  failure  to  find  amongst 
the  newly-conquered  provinces  of  France  the 
welcome  anticipated  is  symptomatic,  and  the 
shock  that  Schillbach  sustained  in  and  about 
Strasburg  has  been  multiplied  by  millions  or 
whenever  the  Prussian  has  stepped  outside  of  his 
fool's  paradise  and  learned  things  as  they  are 
rather  than  as  served  up  to  him  by  an  officially 
inspired  press.  It  is  not  easy  even  for  a  free  man 
and  an  experienced  traveller  to  gauge  the  relative 
strength  of  public  sentiment,  and  in  a  conquered 
country  the  conqueror  is  apt  to  be  easily  deceived 
when  he  consorts  mainly  with  fellow-conquerors. 


The  Attitude  of  Alsace  29 

The  late  Eben  Draper,  Governor  of  Massachusetts 
and  the  head  of  a  great  manufacturing  plant,  was 
talking  with  me  once  on  this  matter  apropos  of  a 
visit  he  had  paid  to  Mulhausen  and  its  machine 
shops.  He  there  enquired  of  the  foreman  if  the 
population  was  now  thoroughly  Prussianized,  this 
being  a  whole  generation  after  the  battle  of  Sedan. 
The  foreman  made  no  answer  but  asked  Mr. 
Draper  to  follow  him  to  a  large  room  with  hun- 
dreds of  cupboards,  one  for  each  workman.  Mr. 
Draper  was  asked  to  open  at  random  any  of  the 
doors  and  form  his  own  opinion.  He  did  so  and 
saw  in  almost  every  instance  flags  and  emblems 
of  the  neighbouring  republic.  Yet  as  late  as 
1894  I  stood  in  a  group  of  indignant  French- 
speaking  people  near  Metz,  listening  to  William  II. 
addressing  his  subjects  officially  declared  Prussian 
since  1870.  "Germans  you  are,"  shouted  he  in  his 
explosive  military  manner,  "Germans  you  have 
ever  been,  and  Germans  shall  you  always  remain, 
so  help  me  God  and  my  good  sword!"  And  with 
that  he  touched  significantly  the  hilt  of  his  cavalry 
sabre,  and  about  me  I  heard  Frenchmen  saying 
to  one  another  with  indiscreet  distinctness,  "  Ah/ 
nous  verrons  $0,!"  and  words  of  like  heretic  import. 
Nor  can  I  discover  that  the  German  language 
has  fared  any  better  on  the  Danish  frontier  or  in 


30  Prussian  Memories 

the  Polish  provinces.  To  learn  a  language  we 
must  love  it,  and  the  German  must  be  personally 
agreeable  if  he  desires  those  whom  he  conquers 
to  change  their  mother-tongue  in  favour  of  his. 
The  administration  places  obstacles  in  the  way  of 
those  refusing  to  make  German  their  language, 
but  all  in  vain. 

Polish  women  persist  in  being  better-looking 
than  those  of  Prussia,  and  the  sons  of  Prussian 
officials  persist  in  falling  in  love  with  good-looking 
girls  who  talk  the  forbidden  tongue  of  Kosciusko 
rather  than  that  of  Bismarck;  and  the  children  of 
these  quasi-German  marriages  chatter  together 
in  Polish  and  think  of  Berlin  only  as  the  residence 
of  a  clumsy  conqueror 

And  so  it  is  with  the  conscientious  efforts  of  the 
Bismarckian  administration  to  suppress  the  use 
of  French  in  Alsace-Lorraine.  Such  international 
things  as  "ticket,"  or  "billet"  have  been  by 
authority  Prussianized  into  Fahrschein.  The  tele- 
phone must  be  called  Fernsprecher,  the  menu  must 
be  called  Speisezettel,  and  even  poor  little  weak 
German  bouillon,  the  one  thing  painfully  common 
to  the  whole  world,  must  be  labelled  Kmftbriihe 
even  when  water  is  the  strongest  ingredient. 

The  failure  of  Bismarck  to  push  the  German 
language  a  single  inch  in  Europe,-  so  far  from  teach- 


The  German  Language  31 

ing  him  wisdom,  only  made  him  seek  revenge  by 
compelling  the  blacks  of  his  African  colonies,  the 
Chinese  in  Kiao-chao,  and  the  Papuans  in  his 
Eastern  Archipelago  to  revive  in  these  hitherto 
melodious  solitudes  the  harsh  gutturals  of  the 
Prussian  drill-ground.  We  of  English  speech 
have  with  unconscious  wisdom  left  languages  to 
settle  their  own  differences.  The  Congressman 
from  Arizona  or  New  Mexico  may  address  the 
House  in  Spanish,  English,  or  Apache  if  he  chooses. 
There  is  no  rule  preventing  a  member  from  using 
French  if  he  hail  from  Louisiana,  or  German  if 
from  Milwaukee  or  Hoboken.  Maybe  it  is  partly 
owing  to  this  American  indifference  that  with  a 
population  of  Germans  greater  than  remained  to 
Prussia  after  the  Treaty  of  Tilsit  the  German  lan- 
guage is  represented  on  American  soil  by  nothing 
better  than  a  few  more  or  less  moribund  news- 
papers and  an  occasional  theatrical  troupe  with 
precarious  finances.  Not  a  single  state,  county, 
town,  university,  or  public  institution  is  today 
German  enough  to  suggest  the  millions  who  have 
come  to  this  country  from  the  Elbe  and  the  Rhine; 
and  still  less  is  there  here  enough  to  justify  the 
perpetual  boasting  of  the  Prussian  at  home  that 
their  Kultur  has  conquered  the  western  world 
no  less  than  Europe.  When  Prince  Henry  visited 


32  Prussian  Memories 

this  country  shortly  after  the  Spanish  War,  the 
imperial  consuls  and  their  satellites  of  commerce 
who  laboured  in  hopes  of  a  Red  Eagle,  struggled 
conscientiously  to  organize  a  German  demonstra- 
tion on  American  soil  that  should  impress  this 
royal  visitor  by  the  power  of  the  Black  Eagle  in 
the  New  World.  Americans  of  German  speech 
did  organize  and  did  welcome  the  distinguished 
visitor,  but  they  refused  all  offers  of  co-operation 
from  alien  consuls  and  insisted  upon  welcoming 
Prince  Henry  as  Americans,  proud  of  a  common 
ancestry  but  glad  that  their  kinship  was  no  nearer. 
Whoever  travels  in  the  Far  East  or  in  the  Dark 
Continent  finds  the  natives  everywhere  proud  of 
their  allegiance  to  the  British  flag,  and  wherever 
British  territory  is  contiguous  to  that  of  native 
princes  or  chieftains  the  drift  of  emigration  is  not 
from  under  the  British  flag  to  native  home  rule, 
but  on  the  contrary.  One  secret  of  this  is  that 
the  British  colonial  official  seeks  to  make  life 
simple  and  rational  to  the  native.  When  naming 
the  streets  or  squares  of  a  settlement  the  English- 
man employs  such  names  as  a  Chinaman,  Malay, 
or  Zulu  can  readily  pronounce;  but  the  German 
adopts  the  opposite  method.  When  he  lays  out 
a  new  city  in  New  Guinea  he  does  not  think  of  the 
inconvenience  to  an  illiterate  Papuan,  but  reflects 


Colonial  Nomenclature  33 

upon  the  glorious  impression  produced  in  Berlin 
by  a  map  whose  nomenclature  recalls  the  reigning 
family  or  the  sterns  of  the  North  German  Lloyd. 
Thus  where  the  English  governor  is  satisfied  with 
High  Street,  Hill  Street,  or  King  Street — names 
which  the  simplest  coolie  can  bear  in  mind,  your 
Prussian  colonial  autocrat  defaces  the  virgin 
forest  with  signboards  in  Gothic  script  proclaim- 
ing to  a  population  of  dissatisfied  natives  that  this 
is  the  Friedrichwilhelmstrasse  or  the  Furstbis- 
marckplatz. 

But  Bismarck  is  the  greatest  of  Prussians,  so 
let  us  get  back  to  1870. 


CHAPTER  V 

Family    Life    at    Schillbach's  —  Hinzpeter  —  Palace 
Romps  —  First  Meeting  with  William  II. 

'"THE  family  of  Professor  Schillbach  in  Potsdam 
*•  offered  an  interesting  picture  of  Prussian 
academic  life.  We  had  one  big,  strong,  broad-in- 
the-beam,  and  ever  cheerful  servant  who  blacked 
the  boots,  cooked  the  food,  scrubbed  the  floors, 
waited  at  table,  did  the  family  wash,  and  in  her 
leisure  moments  mended  clothes  and  wheeled  the 
perambulator.  The  five  children  were  all  chubby, 
flaxen-haired,  blue-eyed  specimens,  ranging  from 
the  babe  in  arms  to  the  biggest  boy  of  about  ten 
who  subsequently  became  a  naval  officer  and  went 
down  with  his  ship.  Children  and  parents  all 
slept  in  one  room,  and  there  was  a  general  family 
scrub  every  Saturday  evening  when  the  main 
room  where  we  dined  and  where  the  children 
romped  resounded  to  the  clatter  of  tin  pans  or 
other  equivalents  for  tubs.  That  my  father  in- 
sisted upon  my  having  a  room  to  myself  was  par- 

34 


Diet  35 

doned  as  the  eccentricity  of  an  exotic,  but  that 
on  top  of  this  I  should  have  a  bath  of  my  own 
every  morning  was  nothing  short  of  scandalous 
and  symbolic  of  latter-day  American  decadence. 
However,  I  soon  became  very  fond  of  the  Schill- 
bach  family  and  they  of  me — a  friendship  which 
has  extended  over  more  than  forty  years  during 
which  never  a  birthday  has  passed  that  we  have 
not  exchanged  long  letters  on  our  respective 
domestic  fortunes.  Being  ambitious  of  passing 
my  examinations,  the  good  Professor  had  more 
concern  in  checking  than  stimulating  my  thirst 
for  knowledge,  and  I  was  always  at  my  desk  an 
hour  or  two  before  breakfast  in  winter  by  lamplight 
and  always  went  over  my  task  in  the  evening  before 
going  to  bed.  At  home  my  parents  encouraged 
a  diet  such  as  we  associate  with  the  dairy  rather 
than  with  the  beer-garden,  but  at  Professor  Schill- 
bach's  the  food  was  overwhelmingly  of  the  kind 
that  goes  well  with  beer,  which  was  forbidden  to 
me.  I  have  often  marvelled  at  the  rugged  health  of 
German  soldiers  and  wondered  how  they  survived 
their  rations.  Perhaps  I  saw  only  the  survivors. 
The  German  diet  is  a  severe  strain  on  stomachs 
accustomed  to  the  French  and  American  kitchen, 
for  I  have  tested  it  many  times  since  and  have 
always  succumbed — and  fled  to  Paris  or  Carlsbad 


36  Prussian  Memories 

for  relief.  There  can  be  but  one  explanation — 
the  Prussian  is  nearer  to  ancestral  barbarism  and 
his  insides  can  stand  a  treatment  under  which 
those  of  a  civilized  man  would  writhe  in  torture. 

One  day  the  quiet  little  street  of  Schillbach  re- 
verberated with  the  clatter  of  a  royal  equipage. 
It  stopped  before  our  door  and  no  less  a  person 
than  the  great  Doctor  Hinzpeter,  tutor  to  the 
royal  princes,  alighted  for  a  formal  call.  The 
upshot  was  that  I  was  carried  away  to  play  with 
the  prospective  Prussian  monarch  and  his  brother 
Henry.  This  did  not  impress  me  as  much  as  it 
did  Schillbach  because  I  had  in  Paris  made  per- 
sonal acquaintance  of  the  Prince  Imperial  whom 
I  disliked  because  his  hair  was  oily  and  his  face 
pale  and  freckled.  His  clothes  had  so  much  of 
lace,  velvet,  and  silk  that  I  longed  to  pull  them  off 
his  back. 

It  sounds  now  rather  majestic  to  refer  to  my 
Paris  boyhood  as  flavoured  by  contact  with  the 
Court  of  Napoleon,  but  to  tell  the  truth  much  of 
my  time  and  that  of  my  elder  brother  was  spent 
in  pursuing  an  education  which  had  little  to  do 
with  the  rules  of  our  nursery,  much  less  those  of 
my  father  and  mother,  to  say  nothing  of  those  in 
vogue  at  the  Court  of  the  Empress  Eugenie. 

There  lived  near  the  Embassy  a  French  family 


Boyhood  Work  37 

whose  business  it  was  to  make  trellises  used  to 
train  flowers  and  also  to  shut  out  the  curiosity 
of  passers-by.  My  brother  and  I  haunted  the 
home  of  these  treillageurs  for  there  were  two  boys 
there,  older  than  ourselves,  and  so  good-natured 
that  they  allowed  us  as  a  great  favour  to  paint 
the  long  thin  strips  with  beautiful  green  paint; 
and  we  were  so  proud  of  this  privilege  that  we  took 
great  pains  to  deserve  the  honour  of  more  work 
at  their  indulgent  hands. 

It  was  glorious  to  escape  from  the  nursery  and 
be  doing  real  things  with  real  people,  but  the  cul- 
mination came  when  our  two  trellis  boys  permitted 
us  to  go  with  them  for  the  purpose  of  delivering  a 
cargo  of  green  trellises  at  some  far-away  point 
through  the  streets  of  the  great  capital.  They 
had  a  push-cart  and  we  were  even  allowed  to  push. 
I  felt  like  a  Robinson  Crusoe  and  never  in  the 
jungles  of  Borneo  have  I  relished  the  sweets  of 
adventure  more  than  when  with  these  two  Paris 
gamins,  and  without  shoes  and  stockings,  we  pad- 
dled up  and  down  the  broad  stone-paved  gutters  of 
the  Champs  Elysees  while  the  blue-dressed  func- 
tionary with  the  long  hose  played  his  refreshing 
stream  about  our  feet. 

This  was  the  University  of  Paris  to  me  and  for- 
tunately I  was  but  seven  years  old,  the  age  when 

211£50 


38  Prussian  Memories 

I  was  able  to  overhear  the  slang  of  carters  and 
mechanics  lounging  about  the  drinking-places 
talking  politics,  swearing  and  fighting  and  paying 
little  heed  to  barefooted  and  unkempt  youngsters 
such  as  we  two  little  Yankees  must  have  appeared 
to  them.  My  vocabu  ary  soon  gathered  to  itself 
adjectives  and  expletives  that  are  perhaps  not 
even  yet  registered  in  the  authoritative  lexicon  of 
the  French  Academy;  nor  did  even  my  father 
ever  suspect  the  depth  if  not  breadth  of  my  lin- 
guistic absorption  in  the  field  of  argot.  I  had 
good  use  for  this  during  the  Franco-German  War 
when  French  prisoners  arrived  by  every  train  and 
they  told  me  tales  fresh  from  the  battle-field — the 
doings  of  their  officers,  the  corruption  in  their 
commissariat,  the  general  debacle  of  what  should 
have  been  a  Napoleonic  organization;  they  told 
their  story  with  choking  voices  and  moist  eyes  not 
merely  because  I  was  an  American,  but  because 
we  talked  the  same  language,  esoteric — of  the 
spirit. 

Later,  during  the  Boer  War,  whilst  bicycling 
near  Saint  Malo  with  my  little  daughters,  a  crusty 
man  by  the  wayside  though  fit  to  gibe  us  with 
such  words  as  "Anglish  spoken"  and  "Plumpud- 
ding";  and  this  was  the  chance  I  had  been  living 
for.  I  wheeled,  dismounted,  and  then  deluged  him 


Boy  Princes  39 

with  so  violent  a  storm  of  thoroughly  familiar 
and  profane  adverbs,  adjectives,  and  exclamations 
that  he  went  down  before  me  like  a  Hindoo  regi- 
ment before  a  charge  of  Mohammedan  cavalry. 
Off  went  his  hat,  out  went  his  hand,  and  we  sepa- 
rated to  the  tune  of  Vive  la  Republique.  A  bas 
Zola! 

And  so  whilst  I  was  being  driven  out  to  the 
Potsdam  palace  behind  the  splendid  Hohenzollern 
horses  and  the  grand  liveries  on  the  box  I  fretted 
more  over  my  interrupted  studies  than  over  details 
of  Court  ceremonial.  But  what  was  my  delight 
when  the  elder  of  the  two  young  princes  came 
forward  with  outstretched  hand  and  laughing 
eyes,  welcoming  me  in  good  English  and  suggest- 
ing that  we  play  Indians  or  indeed  anything  that 
furnished  scope  for  rough  and  tumble.  Prince 
Henry  was  like  his  brother,  ready  for  any  manly 
enterprise,  although  presumably  reminded  often 
enough  by  the  correct  Hinzpeter  that  he  was 
destined  to  be  only  second  in  command  whilst 
William  was  expected  to  take  the  initiative. 

This  Doctor  Hinzpeter  was  rather  a  desiccated 
schoolmastery  stripe  of  Prussian  who  prided  him- 
self much  upon  his  frankness,  learning,  and  cor- 
rectness. He  grieved  over  my  roughness  and 
frequently  warned  me  that  I  must  be  more  gentle 


40  Prussian  Memories 

with  the  young  princes  and  of  course  I  promised. 
But  the  princes  themselves  were  as  much  bored 
by  Hinzpeter's  henpecking  as  I  was,  and  so  were 
two  of  George  von  Bunsen's  sons  who,  being  half 
English  by  their  mother  and  grandmother,  were 
very  far  from  Hinzpeter's  ideals  as  playmates  for 
royalty.  Hinzpeter  disliked  the  Bunsen  boys  no 
doubt  as  cordially  as  he  did  me.  Bunsen,  the 
father,  was  a  distinguished  member  of  the  German 
Reichstag  and  a  notable  political  opponent  of 
Bismarck,  and  that  his  sons  should  have  been  al- 
lowed to  consort  with  the  royal  princes  shows  how 
far  their  parents,  later  Emperor  Frederick  and  his 
English  wife,  daughter  of  Queen  Victoria,  were 
willing  to  act  independently  of  the  rancorous 
Prime  Minister. 

As  for  me,  I  was  only  an  exotic,  a  passing 
stranger,  interesting  perhaps  ethnologically  and 
of  course  incapable  of  undermining  the  orthodox 
teachings  proper  to  a  future  emperor.  When  I 
visited  Hinzpeter  after  the  accession  of  William  II. 
he  spoke  of  the  Bunsen  boys  as  having  had  no 
home  discipline,  or  to  use  his  German  words  nichi 
ungezogen  sondern  unerzogen — which  shows  that 
this  learned  pedagogue  conceived  of  no  education 
save  the  Prussian.  No  family  furnished  a  more 
beautiful  example  of  domestic  happiness,  high 


The  von  Bunsens  41 

thinking,  and  wholesome  discipline  than  that  of 
the  von  Bunsens  in  their  idyllic  English  home  on 
the  edges  of  Berlin.  The  children  were  frank, 
fearless,  loving,  and  considerate  to  one  another  and 
obedient  as  children  ever  are  with  such  parents. 
But  they  had  never  been  Prussianized  and  there- 
fore they  habitually  spoke  the  truth;  and  Hinz- 
peter  preferred  the  orthodox  children  of  Prussia 
who  have  been  drilled  to  stand  at  attention  and 
move  by  word  of  command  only.  Many  such  chil- 
dren came  to  the  palace  during  my  Potsdam  days ; 
they  were  all  of  the  highest  military  aristocracy 
and  were  obviously  invited  for  reasons  of  etiquette 
and  from  no  desire  on  the  part  of  the  two  princes 
who  disliked  nothing  more  than  the  hypocritically 
perfect  manners  of  these  tiresome  supertrained 
junkerings.  However,  it  was  not  their  fault 
entirely,  for  their  parents  had  drilled  the  spontane- 
ous life-spring  out  of  them  and  they  moved  and 
spoke  as  if  a  spy  were  behind  the  arras  to  denounce 
them  for  any  natural  expression  that  might  in- 
advertently drop  from  their  lips.  But  I  noticed 
with  satisfaction  that  these  correct  young  cour- 
tiers were  rarely  invited  a  second  time,  at  least 
whilst  I  was  there;  and  that,  in  spite  of  Hinzpeter's 
views  on  education,  my  unorthodox  self  was  most 
persistently  requisitioned  at  the  palace  to  the 


42  Prussian  Memories 

great  glory  of  the  Schillbachs  and  the  huge  delight 
of  myself. 

The  learned  Hinzpeter  some  years  later,  in  one 
of  those  frank  outbursts  which  have  made  Prus- 
sian diplomacy  famous  throughout  the  world,  said 
to  me:  "I  never  could  understand  why  the  Em- 
peror took  such  a  fancy  to  you." 

This  was  of  course  an  unanswerable  proposition, 
and  if  the  propounder  thereof  is  still  alive  he  is 
no  doubt  still  propounding  it  to  others  than  my- 
self. The  moment  friendship  becomes  a  theme 
for  analysis  it  savours  of  post-mortem.  Regarding 
the  friendship  which  bound  me  to  William  II. 
from  the  days  of  the  Franco-German  War  to  those 
of  the  Jameson  raid,  I  can  only  speak  for  things 
as  I  saw  and  felt  them  myself;  and  if  the  search 
after  the  truth  ends  in  the  loss  of  a  friend  we  must 
seek  consolation  in  further  search  after  more 
truth  if  not  more  friends. 


CHAPTER  VI 

More   Palace   Play   Days  —  Hinzpeter   and   Carey  — 

Frederick   the   Noble    and    Bismarck  —  Die 

Engldnderin. 


playground  of  the  royal  princes  was  any- 
where in  the  beautiful  lake  and  forest  coun- 
try about  Potsdam,  but  the  headquarters  of  the 
then  Crown  Prince,  better  known  later  as  Frederick 
the  Noble,  was  the  vast  pile  erected  by  Frederick 
the  Great  after  the  Seven  Years'  War,  called  the 
New  Palace.  It  stands  in  the  park  of  Sans  Souci, 
and  by  its  cost  and  enormous  proportions  pro- 
claimed to  the  world  of  that  time  that  a  Prussian 
monarch  could  successfully  wage  war  at  one  time 
against  France,  Russia,  and  Austria  and  yet  have 
money  to  spare.  Madame  de  Pompadour  of 
Versailles  may  be  seen  today  as  a  nude  statue 
sustaining  the  crown  of  Prussia  on  top  of  the 
palace  dome  and  in  her  company  are  the  two 
Empresses  of  Russia  and  Austria  respectively. 
Frederick  was  no  respecter  of  women  although  his 

43 


44  Prussian  Memories 

taste  in  art  and  letters  was  that  of  a  man  at  whose 
Court  the  graces  danced  with  the  goose-step  of 
the  grenadier. 

Potsdam  is  a  wilderness  of  palaces,  barracks, 
fountains,  temples,  esplanades,  with  innumerable 
marble  divinities  waving  their  naked  arms  and 
legs  as  though  begging  in  vain  for  warm  clothes 
in  the  damp  and  cold  of  the  Brandenburg  swamps. 
In  vain  we  seek  for  something  natural  to  the  soil — 
it  is  too  often  stucco  made  to  look  like  marble. 
Frederick  himself  despised  the  language  of  his 
people  no  less  than  their  customs  and  their  art. 
He  wrote  habitually  in  French,  and  when  necessity 
compelled  him  to  give  written  instructions  in 
German,  these  read  today  like  something  of  Josh 
Billings  or  Hans  Breitmann — they  would  be  good 
comedy  did  we  not  know  that  their  author  was  in 
tragic  earnest.  To  the  end  of  his  days  this  Prus- 
sian monarch  corresponded  with  French  writers 
to  whom  he  sent  his  manuscript  for  correction  or 
rather  approbation,  and  those  who  today  worship 
this  great  Franco-Prussian  king  should  not  forget 
that  in  the  days  when  America  had  her  Franklin, 
Trumbull,  and  Gilbert  Stuart,  England  her  Gold- 
smith, Johnson,  and  Sir  Joshua,  the  greatest  of  all 
Hohenzollerns  calmly  looked  forward  to  French 
as  the  language  of  Germany  and  cultivated  the 


The  Position  of  Kant  45 

muses  in  the  company  of  Maupertuis,Voltaire,  and 
d'Alembert.  Professor  Schillbach  pointed  out  to 
me  the  grandeur  of  Frederick  the  Great's  eques- 
trian statue  which  adorns  Berlin,  and  mentioned 
by  name  the  many  figures  of  notable  Prussians 
crowding  round  its  base.  But  even  at  that  age  I 
was  struck  by  the  absence  of  all  but  such  as 
wore  military  uniforms.  Kant  of  Konigsberg  was 
tucked  away  immediately  under  the  horse's  tail, 
and  if  this  position  was  symbolic  of  Frederick's 
opinion  of  German  erudition  it  was  expressed 
quite  as  drastically  as  was  on  top  of  the  New 
Palace  his  regard  for  the  Three  Graces  of  the 
Seven  Years'  War. 

But  the  New  Palace  as  a  playground  for  us  boys 
was  unequalled,  at  least  on  rainy  days.  There 
was  an  immense  empty  attic  running  the  whole 
length  of  the  palace  roof,  and  here  on  rainy  days 
we  kicked  football  until  the  broken  panes  of  glass 
attracted  Dr.  Hinzpeter's  attention.  One  day 
Prince  William  led  me  by  a  mysterious  staircase 
into  the  theatre  where  Voltaire  had  acted  in  his 
own  plays  during  the  famous  Potsdam  days,  and 
here  we  amused  ourselves  hauling  scenery  up  and 
down  and  strutting  about  in  imaginary  r61es. 
Here  too  he  showed  me  his  mother's  atelier  where 
paint-pots,  easels,  and  canvases  proclaimed  the 


46  Prussian  Memories 

earnestness  with  which  she  cultivated  the  painter's 
craft.  Whether  we  had  permission  for  these 
prowling  adventures  I  did  not  enquire,  but  the 
secret  was  well  preserved  and  what  I  now  divulge 
can  do  no  harm.  But  when  I  recall  the  many 
times  that  William  II.  has  been  charged  with 
harshness  towards  his  mother  I  can  for  my  part 
bear  witness  only  to  his  oft-expressed  admiration 
for  her  talents.  He  praised  her  pictures  earnestly, 
and  my  first  difference  with  him  arose  at  supper 
that  day  when  he  boasted  regarding  the  quality 
of  the  cake  made,  he  claimed,  by  his  mother's  own 
hands;  whereupon,  of  course,  I  insisted  that  the 
cake  made  by  my  mother  was  better  still.  At  any 
rate  no  parents  could  have  shown  more  interest  in 
their  children  than  the  then  Crown  Prince  and 
Princess.  They  were  generally  present  during 
the  simple  evening  meal  which  consisted  largely 
of  the  things  I  liked  best,  milk  and  nursery  cake 
and  stewed  fruit.  They  had  a  smile  and  kind 
word  for  each  of  their  little  guests  and  the  mother 
in  particular  had  a  keen  eye  for  napkins  not  pro- 
perly tucked  in  or  any  breach  in  nursery  manners. 
Needless  to  say  they  never  failed  to  ask  after  my 
father  and  mother  in  Berlin  and  send  a  kindly 
message. 

Twenty  years  later,  when  William  II.  dismissed 


Dropping  the  Pilot  47 

his  Chancellor  or  rather  accepted  one  of  his  many 
petulant  resignations,  he  frankly  discussed  his 
reasons  with  me  and  I  was  glad  to  note  that 
amongst  the  many  which  weighed  with  him  not  the 
least  of  them  referred  to  the  manner  in  which  the 
late  Prime  Minister  spoke  of  this  royal  mother 
and  even  permitted  the  treatment  given  to  her 
by  his  official  press. 

In  the  later  Bismarckian  days  Empress  Frede- 
rick existed  in  high  Prussian  circles  only  as  Die 
Engldnderin — The  Englishwoman. 

William  II.  differed  radically  from  both  father 
and  mother  as  he  developed  in  years  and  experi- 
ence of  Prussian  official  and  military  society.  He 
had  been  nurtured  as  might  have  been  an  English 
prince,  but  once  out  of  the  nursery  and  in  the 
current  of  the  all-pervading  Prussianism  he  was 
soon  swept  away  by  its  seductive  power.  His 
parents  stood  for  constitutional  monarchy  of  a 
very  liberal  character;  but  young  William  grew  up 
in  the  image  of  his  grandfather;  and,  while  he 
never,  so  far  as  I  know,  wavered  in  his  filial  duties 
as  a  man,  he  repudiated  loudly  and  consistently 
any  sympathy  with  the  political  heresies  of  which 
Frederick  the  Noble  was  accused. 

One  of  our  chief  amusements,  whenever  the 
weather  permitted,  was  to  sail  on  a  toy  frigate 


48  Prussian  Memories 

which  had  been  presented  to  the  husband  of 
Queen  Louise  by  the  English  King  who  preceded 
Queen  Victoria.  It  was  a  perfect  model  of  a  full- 
rigged  three-master  British  man-of-war  before  the 
days  of  steam,  and  at  a  distance  revived  memories 
of  battles  under  Rodney  and  Nelson.  But  when 
one  came  alongside  it  was  only  a  plaything  about 
the  size  of  a  man-o'-war's  launch,  albeit  the  yards 
and  sails  and  halyards  were  in  every  detail  com- 
plete, at  least  everything  above  the  level  of  the 
deck.  On  this  toy  frigate  we  cruised  after  im- 
aginary buccaneers,  and  under  the  guidance  of  an 
experienced  petty  officer  of  the  navy  we  trimmed 
the  little  yards,  flattened  in  the  sheets  of  the  head- 
sails,  and  manipulated  the  baby  pieces  of  artillery 
with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  boys  playing  at  real 
war.  William  delighted  in  this  work  and  it  would 
not  be  much  of  an  exaggeration  to  call  this  little 
British  plaything  the  parent  ship  of  his  latter-day 
navy. 

No  game  interested  him  much  that  did  not 
suggest  war.  Myself  being  fresh  from  America, 
I  was  credited,  if  not  with  Indian  blood,  at  least 
with  intimate  knowledge  of  redskin  tactics;  con- 
sequently we  talked  much  of  Fenimore  Cooper, 
the  Deerslayer,  and  Chingachgook  at  our  first 
meeting,  and  at  our  second  I  gave  Prince  William 


A  Hohenzollern  Indian  49 

an  Indian  bow  with  gaudy  tassels  at  each  end  and 
a  bunch  of  arrows  with  blunt  heads.  These  war- 
like reminders  of  America's  first  families  had  been 
a  present  from  my  mother,  purchased  probably 
from  an  alleged  Mohawk  chief  who  invariably 
presided  in  those  days  over  the  souvenir-shops  at 
Niagara  Falls.  But  this  is  afterthought. 

The  moment  William  II.  had  these  precious 
implements  in  his  possession  he  radiantly  sug- 
gested a  war  game  on  the  Iroquois  plan — and  our 
victims  were  not  far  to  seek.  We  elected  our- 
selves exclusive  members  of  the  Ancient  and 
Honourable  Order  of  Red  Men  and  declared  all 
others  to  be  palefaces;  and  as  the  outcasts  were 
mainly  of  the  much-drilled  and  very  correct  Prus- 
sian aristocracy  we  took  youthful  pleasure  in 
chasing  them  through  the  bushes  of  the  great 
park,  seizing  them  by  the  hair,  lashing  them  to 
trees,  and  then  metaphorically  shooting  them  full 
of  arrows.  Of  course  we  gave  out  blood-curdling 
war-whoops  and  did  such  war-dances  as  might 
have  surprised  even  Sitting  Bull.  My  poor  young 
brain  was  heavily  taxed  to  supply  information 
regarding  aboriginal  custom  on  the  Upper  Mis- 
souri and  the  Rio  Grande;  but  having  once  been 
placed  in  the  chair  of  Redmanology  I  had  to 
speak  ex  cathedra,  for  to  have  confessed  that  I 

4 


50  Prussian  Memories 

had  never  seen  an  American  Indian  would  have 
imperilled  my  palace  prestige. 

In  parenthesis  I  should  add  that  the  dress  of 
my  royal  hosts  was  simple  and  workmanlike,  in 
contrast  to  the  costly  and  useless  accoutrements 
of  the  French  Prince  Imperial  on  the  occasion  to 
which  I  have  referred.  Also  do  I  cheerfully  note 
here  as  part  of  the  paradoxical  career  of  a  great 
war  lord  that  during  these  Potsdam  days  a 
neutral  observer  could  have  distinguished  but 
with  difficulty  who  were  the  hosts  and  who  were 
the  guests,  so  considerate  and  natural  were  the 
manners  of  these  boys,  and  so  heartily  did  they 
enter  into  the  spirit  of  manly  sport. 

Another  feature  of  the  palace  grounds  which  I 
had  almost  forgotten  was  a  gymnasium,  whose 
equipment  consisted  of  three  masts  with  good  spars 
and  rigging  as  of  a  fair-sized  clipper  ship.  The 
masts  were  planted  in  the  sand,  and  in  lieu  of  a 
deck  there  was  stretched  a  vast  net  for  the  pro- 
tection of  such  as  might  fall  from  the  yardarms. 
This  nautical  playground  was  also  dear  to  the 
princes,  although  on  account  of  a  weakness  in  his 
left  arm  the  elder  of  the  two  was  much  limited  in 
his  range  of  activity.  In  later  years  I  was  told 
by  Surgeon-General  Leuthold  that  the  Emperor's 
infirmity  was  due  to  the  person  who  attended  his 


The  Crippled  Arm  51 

mother  at  her  accouchement.  He  was  injured 
by  obstetric  instruments  and  must  therefore  now 
do  with  his  right  arm  alone  three  quarters  of  the 
work  that  should  be  distributed  between  the  two 
of  a  normal  man.  His  left  is  not  wholly  helpless 
as  anyone  can  tell  who  has  seen  him  in  the  saddle 
handling  his  reins  and  wielding  his  sword  simul- 
taneously. But  still  the  handicap  is  a  severe  one, 
and  it  speaks  strongly  for  the  Emperor's  pluck  and 
persistence  that  he  has  succeeded  not  only  in  being 
an  excellent  marksman  but  in  doing  so  much  work 
with  one  arm  alone  as  to  scarcely  miss  the  other. 
Doctor  Hinzpeter  remained  throughout  his  life 
a  trusted  adviser  of  the  Emperor  and  this  is  at- 
tested by  many  titles  and  decorations  dear  to  the 
Prussian  heart.  In  1888,  after  his  accession  to 
the  throne,  the  Emperor  spoke  warmly  to  me  of 
his  former  tutor  and  urged  me  to  visit  him  in 
Westphalia  where  he  lived  on  a  Crown  pension, 
occupied  nominally  with  reading  and  preparing  for 
his  master's  eye  the  most  important  utterances 
in  the  French  press.  He  had  married  one  of  the 
French  governesses  of  the  royal  family  and  I 
spent  an  interesting  day  in  their  company.  She 
had  the  charm  and  tact  natural  to  Frenchwomen, 
and  he  did  nearly  all  the  talking,  in  which  exercise 
he  laid  bare  huge  abysses  of  tactlessness,  misin- 


52  Prussian  Memories 

formation,  and  ignorance  of  real  life.  Prussia  is 
so  full  of  Hinzpeters  that  this  one  would  not  now 
arrest  my  pen  save  for  the  fact  that  his  views  and 
those  of  his  Imperial  master  have  been  on  many 
points  identical.  Of  course  he  despised  democracy, 
especially  that  of  my  own  country,  and  proved  the 
failure  of  free  institutions  by  complacently  enu- 
merating the  great  things  accomplished  by  the 
Hohenzollerns  and  the  utter  absence  of  any  intel- 
lectual achievement  on  American  soil.  He  had 
never  heard  of  any  scientific  research  work  in 
any  American  university;  Yale  and  Harvard  meant 
no  more  to  him  than  a  missionary  school  on  the 
Congo;  I  did  not  ask  him  if  he  had  ever  heard  of 
Fulton  who  placed  the  first  successful  steamboat 
on  any  water,  nor  of  Elias  Howe  who  invented  -the 
sewing-machine,  nor  of  Morse  who  made  the  tele- 
graph practicable,  nor  of  Bushnell  who  first  used 
the  submarine  boat,  nor  of  Eli  Whitney  and  his 
cotton-gin.  I  could  not  interrupt  this  academic 
master  who  dictatorially  piled  upon  me  sentence 
after  sentence  each  one  of  which  condemned  my 
beloved  country  to  the  rank  of  a  minor  republic 
between  Cape  Horn  and  the  Amazon.  I  tried  to 
say  a  word  for  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  Hawthorne, 
Longfellow,  Whittier,  Motley,  and  Prescott,  but 
as  well  seek  to  launch  a  toothpick  in  the  jaws  of 


The  "Greatest  American"          53 

Niagara.  He  was  a  Prussian  and  he  knew  it  all, 
and  he  beamed  serenely  down  upon  me  from  his 
unassailable  pulpit  and  vainly  sought  for  any  one 
name  that  could  redeem  the  North  American 
continent  from  being  a  mere  wilderness  of  moneyed 
mediocrity.  At  last,  after  long  and  silent  search- 
ing, he  looked  at  me  as  one  who  seeks  to  make 
amends  for  loving  frankness  and  said:  "America 
has  produced  one  and  only  one  name  that  will 
live  in  history — a  name  worthy  of  a  place  by  the 
side  of  our  great  Prussian  thinkers."  At  this  I 
too  lost  some  of  my  gloom,  and  thought  now 
here  is  a  chance  for  Washington  or  possibly  Ben 
Franklin.  But  what  was  my  amazement  when 
he  sententiously  pronounced  the  name  "Carey"! 
Perhaps  his  amazement  was  equal  to  mine  when 
I  remarked  that  I  had  never  heard  the  name! 
"What,"  cried  he,  "you  do  not  know  the  great 
economist  Carey!" 

And  then  a  great  light  went  up  within  me,  and 
I  recalled  the  name  of  one  who  is  a  byword  in 
America  amongst  all  who  deal  seriously  with  the 
problems  of  Adam  Smith  and  his  Wealth  of 
Nations.  Had  he  mentioned  the  Book  of  Mormon 
as  America's  chief  historical  work  I  could  not 
have  been  more  bewildered.  Yet  how  curiously 
does  the  law  close  its  circle!  Here  is  an  obscure 


54  Prussian  Memories 

Pennsylvania  publisher  founding  in  Germany  the 
Protectionism  championed  by  Bismarck  soon 
after  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  and  then  behold 
this  same  Protectionism  warmly  championed  in 
America  itself  by  innumerable  speakers  saying  to 
the  people:  "How  can  Protection  fail  to  be  a  good 
thing  when  it  has  the  endorsement  of  the  great 
Bismarck?" 

So   much   for   Hinzpeter   and   Henry   Charles 
Carey  of  Pennsylvania! 


CHAPTER  VII 

Norwich    Academy — Yale — American    vs.    German 

Student — Return    to    Berlin — Bunsen — 

Ampthill — Bismarck. 

IN  the  autumn  of  1872  my  father  took  me  away 
from  Professor  Schillbach  in  Potsdam  and 
transferred  me  to  the  home  of  Professor  Hutchison, 
the  eminent  principal  of  the  excellent  academy 
at  Norwich,  Connecticut,  where  I  was  graduated 
in  1873,  passing  thence  to  New  Haven,  where, 
after  matriculating  and  going  through  freshman 
year,  my  health,  which  had  been  undermined  by 
Potsdam  diet  and  lack  of  exercise,  gave  way  and 
I  spent  the  next  two  years  in  a  voyage  round  the 
world  in  the  last  of  A.  A.  Low's  famous  clippers, 
the  Surprise.  It  was  a  memorable  cruise  to  me 
for  I  studied  navigation  with  the  first  mate;  lent 
a  hand  aloft  with  the  men ;  was  chaplain,  surgeon, 
and  librarian ;  organized  an  orchestra  in  the  fo'csle, 
and  kept  up  with  my  college  work,  besides  doing 
my  own  mending  and  laundry.  The  ship  was 

55 


56  Prussian  Memories 

wrecked  completely  on  the  shores  of  Japan  and 
this  gave  me  an  excuse  for  travelling  alone  into 
China  when  there  was  not  a  mile  of  railway  in 
the  whole  empire  and  when  even  Japan  was  but 
just  commencing  to  discard  the  wearing  of  swords 
in  public. 

In  1876,  I  was  back  at  Yale  again,  but  now 
stronger  in  body  and  infinitely  better  equipped 
for  taking  advantage  of  undergraduate  opportu- 
nities, if  not  honours  in  the  academic  sense.  To 
be  sure  I  had  carried  off  the  Latin  prize  in  fresh- 
man year,  but  such  things  were  trifles  compared  to 
the  honour  of  being  permitted  to  row  in  the  second 
"Varsity"  eight  under  the  one  and  only  "Bob" 
Cook  who  had  for  many  years  coached  our  crew 
to  victory  over  the  Crimson.  I  was  elected  secre- 
tary and  treasurer  of  the  Dunham  Rowing  Club; 
captain  of  the  light-weight  four  that  raced  and  won 
at  Lake  Saltonstall ;  chairman  of  the  Yale  Courant 
and  the  first  to  make  it  an  illustrated  paper. 
Most  of  my  time  in  the  classroom  I  spent  writing 
Courant  articles;  and  out  of  the  classroom  I  was 
mostly  at  the  boat  house,  when  the  river  was  open. 
At  graduating  I  was  chairman  of  the  Ivy  Commit- 
tee and  one  of  the  four  Class  Historians  and  about 
as  near  the  bottom  of  my  class  as  it  was  possible 
to  get  without  going  out  of  sight. 


My  Debt  to  Yale  57 

Thus  you  see  that  what  I  owe  to  dear  old  Yale 
is  the  experience  gained  in  aquatics,  journalism, 
and  college  politics.  The  love  of  study  and  aca- 
demic ideals  which  I  brought  with  me  from  home 
were  all  but  eradicated  by  the  vicious  "marking 
system,"  so  called,  which  bears  no  more  relation 
to  scholarship  than  priestcraft  to  religion.  Yale 
to  me  was  a  four-year  holiday  of  perpetual  social 
and  physical  exhilaration  sandwiched  in  between 
a  schoolboy  life  of  real  academic  value  and  a  later 
life  devoted  almost  exclusively  to  my  two  hobbies, 
history  and  letters.  If  in  my  old  age  advice  to 
others  can  be  pardoned  let  me  recommend  a  similar 
course,  if  conditions  are  now  as  they  were  prior 
to  1879.  My  father  was  always  generous  to  me 
in  money  matters,  and  I  fixed  my  own  allowance 
at  $1000.00  a  year — sending  him  each  month  an 
itemized  account  of  expenditure.  He  gave  me 
free  rein  at  college  and  I  subscribed  to  the  usual 
clubs  and  events;  lived  well — in  short  felt  that  I 
was  spending  as  much  as  I  ought  to.  My  father 
never  gambled  and  said  he  hoped  I  never  would — 
on  all  other  moral  points  he  extracted  no  promises. 
He  knew  that  I  knew  how  he  felt.  Consequently 
I  never  smoked,  nor  used  profane  language,  nor 
drank,  nor  borrowed  money,  nor  gambled,  nor  bet, 
nor  ever  knew  that  there  was  a  brothel  or  even  a 


58  Prussian  Memories 

loose  woman  in  New  Haven.  And  to  the  credit 
of  American  student  life,  let  me  add  that  the  over- 
whelming majority  of  my  classmates  lived  practi- 
cally as  I  did — and  certainly  no  one  ever  twitted 
me  with  being  a  prig  or  a  Joseph.  In  those  days 
I  was  a  fluent  banjoist;  was  stage  manager  of  my 
junior-year  society;  sang  in  the  chapel  choir,  and 
won  a  prize  at  boxing. 

These  items  of  harmless  youthful  student  life 
are  interesting  when  compared  with  those  making 
up  the  life  of  a  Prussian  lad  of  the  same  age  at  a 
corresponding  university,  where  much  of  his  day 
is  devoted  to  beer,  and  where  the  girl  who  makes 
his  bed  is  by  common  consent  presumed  to  occupy 
it  when  bidden.  But  I  am  digressing. 

At  last  after  an  interval  of  twelve  years  I  found 
myself  once  more  in  Berlin,  interested  very  little  in 
red  Indians  and  toy  frigates,  but  very  much  alive 
to  political  symptoms  and  the  enormous  economic 
changes  that  had  almost  transformed  Germany 
since  the  great  French  War. 

The  Prussia  of  1884  was  wholly  Bismarckian; 
the  Prussia  that  I  had  left  in  1872  was  one  whose 
ideals  were  ostensibly  gratified  by  a  close  military 
and  economic  alliance  of  all  German  states  under 
the  Imperial  Crown.  In  the  halcyon  days  which 
succeeded  1870  there  was  the  most  cordial  fellow- 


The  Prussia  of  1870  59 

ship  between  soldiers  and  civilians.  Officers  in 
uniform  were  familiar  sights  at  the  hotel  tables 
of  small  garrison  towns.  Nobody  talked  of  Im- 
perial colonies,  or  a  big  navy,  or  Germany's  mani- 
fest destiny,  or  her  place  in  the  sun.  Free  trade 
or  a  small  tariff  for  revenue  only  was  the  fiscal 
policy,  and  the  natural  thrift  and  enterprise  of  her 
people  were  quite  enough  to  ensure  a  fair  return 
upon  capital  invested.  But  in  twelve  short  years 
the  Iron  Chancellor  had  managed  to  make  over 
this  happy  Fatherland  into  a  nation  full  of  politi- 
cal and  commercial  discord.  The  Socialist  vote 
which  had  almost  failed  to  materialize  in  1872 
was  now  so  large  as  to  give  the  Government  grave 
concern.  Colonial  enterprise  was  being  encour- 
aged, steamships  to  far-away  countries  were  being 
subsidized,  and  industries  were  being  artificially 
stimulated  by  means  of  the  new  protective  tariff. 

George  von  Bunsen  admired  Bismarck  for  his 
share  in  giving  Germany  the  unity  desired  by  her 
people,  but  he  distrusted  the  outcome  of  the  new 
Bismarck  legislation  and  therefore  as  a  conscien- 
tious member  of  Parliament  opposed  the  great 
Chancellor  both  in  print  and  on  the  platform. 

But  Bismarck  could  not  understand  that  a 
Prussian  might  be  loyal  to  his  King  and  yet  vote 
against  a  bill  proposed  by  that  King's  minister; 


60  Prussian  Memories 

consequently  he  procured  the  arrest  of  von  Bun- 
sen  and  his  trial  for  something  akin  to  "lese- 
Bismarck."  It  was  a  costly  trial  to  Bunsen 
although  he  won  on  the  mere  technicality  that 
there  was  no  official  report  of  the  particular 
speech  to  which  Bismarck  had  objected. 

Soon  afterwards  the  von  Bunsen  family  gave  a 
large  party  for  the  sake  of  their  daughters,  some 
of  whom  were  now  of  society  age;  but  to  their 
surprise  and  chagrin  no  one  came  but  a  few  of  the . 
family  or  strangers  in  the  capital.  It  afterwards 
appeared  that  Bismarck  had  forbidden  the  Bunsen 
house  to  all  loyal  Prussians,  or  in  other  words  had 
pragmatically  intimated  that  such  Prussians  as 
chose  to  consort  with  a  notorious  opponent  of 
the  Chancellor  need  not  expect  favours  at  his 
hands.  And  as  practically  every  avenue  to  State 
preferment  depended  directly  or  indirectly  upon 
Bismarckian  good-will,  this  blow  at  Bunsen  affected 
not  merely  officers  of  the  army  and  navy  but  offi- 
cials in  the  law,  medical,  and  diplomatic  branches 
of  the  government,  to  say  nothing  of  professors  in 
the  university,  artists  and  men  of  letters  who  had 
something  to  lose  and  little  to  gain  by  disobeying 
a  Bismarck.  So  great  for  evil  was  this  name  that 
even  the  members  of  foreign  embassies  were  made 
to  feel  that  their  business  at  the  Foreign  Office 


A  Monster  Policeman  61 

would  not  be  accelerated  by  courting  the  enemies 
of  its  chief;  and  the  newspaper  fraternity  had 
learned  by  sad  experience  that  news  from  the 
Wilhelmstrasse  was  given  most  freely  to  those  who 
printed  most  obediently  the  words  of  the  Govern- 
ment Press  Bureau.  From  being  the  Bismarck 
of  German  unity,  the  partner  of  Moltke  in  a  great 
national  struggle,  he  was  now  a  monster  policeman 
prying  into  every  family  and  punishing  political 
opinions  as  though  Germany  had  no  constitution. 
Bunsen  told  me,  by  way  of  illustrating  the  power 
of  the  Iron  Chancellor  even  over  foreign  embassies, 
that  his  friend  the  British  Ambassador,  Lord  Ampt- 
hill,  showed  keen  interest  in  a  new  palaeontological 
specimen  that  had  just  been  received  by  the  Berlin 
University — a  pterodactyl,  if  my  memory  serves. 
Bunsen  arranged  to  gratify  the  Ambassador,  but 
they  had  to  meet  as  by  accident  in  an  inner  room, 
and  on  parting  Bunsen  had  to  forego  seeing  his 
friend  even  to  the  public  entrance  of  the  University 
for  fear  a  spy  might  report  to  his  chief  that  Lord 
Ampthill  had  been  seen  in  company  with  one  who 
voted  against  Bismarck ! 

Other  liberals  were  persecuted  by  Bismarck 
but  none  so  venomously  as  Bunsen,  because  in 
this  statesman  he  saw  not  merely  a  champion  of 
constitutional  government  but  a  man  of  substan- 


62  Prussian  Memories 

tial  means,  important  family  connection,  and  above 
all  a  warm  personal  friend  of  the  Crown  Prince 
(later  Emperor  Frederick)  and  his  wife,  the  daugh- 
ter of  Queen  Victoria.  By  crushing  Bunsen  he 
proclaimed  to  all  the  disaffected  his  power  to 
reach  an  enemy  even  when  under  the  cloak  of 
royalty. 

In  the  happy  weeks  that  I  spent  as  guest  of  von 
Bunsen  in  Berlin  he  told  me  much  of  what  liberals 
had  to  suffer,  tales  that  would  be  incredible  coming 
from  anyone  else. 

One  day,  for  instance,  to  his  surprise  he  received 
an  invitation  to  dine  with  the  Chancellor  and,  re- 
volving in  his  mind  all  the  possible  reasons  for  so 
strange  an  act,  he  concluded  that-  perhaps  after 
all  Bismarck  intended  this  as  an  olive-branch  of 
peace,  possibly  an  acknowledgment  of  past  wrongs. 
So  he  went  and  found  gathered  together  a  large 
party  of  Parliamentarians,  all  waiting  until  the 
great  Chancellor  should  appear  and  make  his 
semi-royal  circle  according  to  custom.  At  last  he 
entered  and  having  prepared  this  demonstration 
for  a  particular  reason  he  went  from  one  to  the 
other,  greeting  each  in  turn,  but  reserving  Bunsen 
for  the  last.  Here  he  stood  a  moment  erect, 
stared  silently  at  his  amazed  guest,  then  turned  on 
his  heel  and  led  the  way  into  the  banqueting-hall. 


"Done  to  Death  by  Bismarck"     63 

Bunsen  turned  also  on  his  heel,  sought  the  nearest 
restaurant,  and  meditated  on  the  machinery  that 
can  make  brutes  into  Bismarcks  and  Bunsens  into 
outcasts. 

It  is  a  pitiful  tale,  for  no  more  generous-minded 
patriot  ever  adorned  the  annals  of  the  German 
Parliament  than  George  von  Bunsen  nor  was  ever 
personal  spite  displayed  in  such  high  quarters 
with  so  much  success.  Bunsen  is  now  dead;  the 
house  in  which  he  lived  no  longer  belongs  to  his 
family;  he  gave  one  son  to  the  army  and  another 
to  the  navy,  yet  on  his  tombstone,  if  the  truth  could 
there  be  told,  we  would  find  engraved  in  flaming 
letters:  "Done  to  death  by  Bismarck." 

Some  day  a  volume  can  be  made  from  the 
memoirs  of  Bismarck's  victims,  as  Count  von  Ar- 
nim,  arrested  and  tried  for  high  treason  merely 
because  he  appeared  to  be  a  possible  rival;  then 
Professor  Geffken,  whose  death  Bismarck  hastened 
by  sending  this  delicate  old  gentleman  to  prison 
on  the  flimsy  charge  of  having  forged  a  diary  of 
the  Emperor  Frederick.  The  law  courts  abun- 
dantly exonerated  the  victim,  but  the  mischief 
was  done  and  the  aged  scholar  survived  his  release 
but  by  a  few  weeks. 

Is  it  a  wonder  that  William  II.  should  have  dis- 
missed Bismarck  even  though  his  brutality  sue- 


64  Prussian  Memories 

ceeded  in  one  notable  instance?  But,  fortunately 
for  humanity,  between  the  close  of  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War  and  the  dropping  of  this  pilot,  to 
use  the  magnanimous  language  of  Punch's  famous 
cartoon,  there  is  scarce  a  measure  for  which  Bis- 
marck laboured  that  did  not  prove  a  doubtful 
advantage  if  not  disastrous.  Brutality  was  the 
keynote  of  his  policy  towards  the  provinces  taken 
from  France  and  yet  under  this  brutality  nothing 
prospered  save  hatred  of  Prussia.  His  plans  for 
the  pacification  of  Poland  and  of  the  Danish 
provinces;  those  for  the  extirpation  of  Socialism; 
for  the  making  of  a  great  colonial  empire  as  an 
outlet  for  German  emigration  and  products;  for 
the  purging  of  the  language  of  hated  foreign 
words — in  short,  every  Bismarckian  measure  I 
can  think  of  suggests  that  its  conception  was 
reached  on  a  Prussian  drill-ground  rather  than 
in  the  cabinet  of  a  statesman. 

And  while  granting  to  Bismarck  all  that  brutal- 
ity can  claim  as  its  share  in  securing  five  milliards 
from  France,  and  two  provinces;  I  for  one  hold  that 
Germany  lost  much  more  than  she  gained  by  a 
treaty  which  alienated  not  only  the  political  but 
also  the  social  and  artistic  sympathies  of  a  country 
of  which  she  had  been  in  the  past  the  most  grateful 
imitator.  Prussia  has  added  much  land  and 


Prussian  Gain  and  Loss  65 

money,  population  and  ships,  factories  and  rail- 
ways— but  these  are  purely  material  triumphs,  not 
for  a  moment  comparable  to  the  qualities  which 
make  Paris  today  the  centre  of  the  world's  civil- 
ization no  less  than  the  arbiter  of  good  taste.  And 
in  so-called  modern  invention  when  I  name  smoke- 
less powder,  the  submarine  ship,  the  dirigible 
balloon,  the  automobile,  and  the  bicycle,  is  it  not 
to  France  that  we  owe  the  perfection  if  not  the 
conception  of  these  five  startling  discoveries  of 
later  days? — and  all  this  since  Bismarck  dictated 
terms  of  peace  to  the  mutilated  remnants  of  a 
France  which  he  fondly  believed  would  never  rise 
again. 

5 


CHAPTER  VIII 

William    II.    becomes     Emperor — Militarism — Vir- 

chow — German  Scholars  at  Court — Helm- 

holtz. 

\  X  71LLIAM  II.  became  Emperor  in  1888  and 
with  him  commenced  a  new  and  very  dis- 
tinct era  in  Germany.  Prophecy  must  be  ven- 
tured in  spite  of  its  dangers,  and  therefore  I  may 
be  pardoned  if  I  regard  1888  as  the  inauguration 
of  militarism  for  its  own  sake  and  the  practical 
Prussianizing  of  Germany.  The  present  Emperor 
may  dash  this  prophecy  and  he  would  not  be  the 
first  to  have  made  and  unmade  the  record  of  a 
reign.  Let  the  imagination  play  with  Napoleon  I. 
escaping  from  Saint  Helena  and  retrieving 
Waterloo  with  the  assistance  of  a  free  French 
Parliament.  What  would  have  been  the  fate  of 
America  had  Charles  I.  escaped  the  block  and 
met  his  English  subjects  frankly  and  courageously? 
New  England,  instead  of  being  the  refuge  of  obsti- 
nate Puritans  might  have  been  parcelled  off  into 

66 


Frederick  the  Great  67 

baronial  manors;  and  the  war  which  began  with 
Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill  have  proved  but  a 
temporary  interruption  in  the  great  march  of  the 
British  monarchy. 

Frederick  the  Great  never  had  a  large  army  com- 
pared with  those  of  today,  but  it  was  terribly 
efficient  and  always  larger,  stronger,  and  more 
active  than  that  of  any  other  monarch.  His  sol- 
diers were  virtually  slaves  whom  he  flogged,  shot, 
or  rewarded  without  reference  to  the  paragraphs 
of  any  law-book;  but  he  was  a  wise  despot  and 
such  an  one  recruits  with  ease.  His  army  and 
his  system,  however,  were  completely  wrecked  in 
1806  at  the  battle  of  Jena,  when  the  son  of  a  Cor- 
sican  notary  chased  the  whole  Prussian  army  along 
with  its  titled  officers  through  a  dozen  different 
German  states  and  halted  only  when  a  few  frag- 
ments of  the  Potsdam  guards  crept  into  the  Russian 
lines  for  safety. 

The  defeat  of  Prussian  troops  on  the  fields  of 
Auerstaedt  and  Jena  was  of  small  importance 
compared  with  the  cowardice  of  the  military  aris- 
tocracy that  surrendered  one  fortress  after  an- 
other without  making  defence  and  in  some  case 
even  before  it  was  called  upon  to  surrender. 
There  was  one  exception  in  this  pitiful  chain  of 
Prussian  pusillanimity :  Colberg  held  out  bravely, 


68  Prussian  Memories 

but  her  defender  was  Gneisenau — and  he  was  not 
a  Prussian.  Blucher  also  fought  valiantly  to  the 
end,  but  again — he  was  not  a  Prussian. 

William  I.  was  then  eight  years  of  age,  and 
this  humiliation  taught  him  lessons  that  were 
never  absent  from  his  mind.  It  seems  but  yester- 
day that  I  gazed  in  youthful  wonder  at  this  vener- 
able monarch  entering  Berlin  at  the  head  of  his 
victorious  army — an  army  whose  greatest  triumph 
in  the  eyes  of  the  Germans  was  that  it  had  finally 
freed  them  from  the  fear  of  invasion. 

In  American  history,  and  English  to  a  less 
degree,  we  study  public  opinion,  customs,  in- 
stitutions, superstitions,  and  from  them  anticipate 
probable  parliamentary  action.  The  lives  of  our 
statesmen  are  of  great  interest  in  so  far  as  they 
tell  us  of  difficulties  surmounted  in  a  career  in- 
volving necessarily  much  compromise  and  diplo- 
matic tact.  But  we  rise  from  exhaustive  reading  in 
this  field  with  the  somewhat  despondent  reflection 
that  in  free  governments  one  man  replaces  the 
other  with  remarkable  regularity  and  no  man 
makes  a  greater  mistake  than  when  he  con- 
ceives that  his  public  services  are  indispensable. 

In  Prussia,  the  study  of  a  sovereign  and  his 
Court  is  the  legitimate  not  to  say  morbid  occupa- 
tion of  every  subject.  The  Prussian  Parliament 


The  Prussian  Parliament  69 

and  public  opinion  are  but  as  dust  in  the  balance 
compared  with  a  royal  attack  of  indigestion  or 
infatuation  for  a  new  toy.  The  Prussia  of  Frede- 
rick the  Great  was  thrown  in  and  out  of  war  with 
no  more  consultation  of  the  people  affected  than 
when  I  mortgage  my  barn  or  sell  a  fat  bullock. 
The  Prussia  of  1863  woke  to  find  itself  transformed 
overnight  into  a  State  without  parliament  or  con- 
stitution, and  all  accomplished  by  a  few  minutes 
of  conversation  between  William  the  Venerable 
and  Bismarck  the  Only.  The  history  of  Prussia 
is  the  chronicle  not  of  popular  movements  pressing 
upon  Parliament  and  the  throne,  but  of  personal 
qualities  in  the  monarch  reflecting  themselves 
through  the  officials  whom  he  selects.  William  I. 
at  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Jena  was  scarce  older 
than  myself  when  at  the  Kortegarn  institution, 
and  to  me  the  impressions  received  in  those  years 
— the  struggles  of  the  American  Civil  War  and 
the  attitude  of  England  and  France  towards  the 
Confederacy,  the  life  of  Paris,  and  above  all  the 
sight  of  Louis  Napoleon  and  his  beautiful  Eugenie 
cavalcading  each  day  up  that  most  imperial  of 
avenues  from  the  Tuileries  to  the  Bois  de  Boulogne 
and  being  acclaimed  by  an  apparently  devoted 
throng  of  fashionably  dressed  people — these  are 
all  indelible  pictures.  Need  we  then  wonder  that 


70  Prussian  Memories 

William  I.  felt  justified  in  the  adoption  of  any 
means  rather  than  risk  another  Jena  or  still  worse 
another  Berlin  with  barricaded  streets  as  in  '48? 

William  II.  loved  and  venerated  this  old  Em- 
peror, for  in  him  he  recognized  the  incarnation  of 
Prussian  ideals,  a  strong  military  state  with  just 
enough  constitutional  veneer  to  satisfy  the  civilian 
population  but  never  to  such  a  degree  as  might 
ever  prove  inconvenient  to  the  police.  It  was  a 
grim  commentary  on  the  danger  of  such  plans 
when  William  I.  was  succeeded  but  for  only  a 
hundred  days  by  his  son,  whom  the  aristocracy 
looked  upon  as  a  menace  to  their  supremacy. 
Frederick  II.  was  a  sick  man  from  the  day  of  his 
accession  to  the  end.  Had  he  been  a  Romanoff  or 
included  in  the  pages  of  Tacitus,  posterity  would 
have  credited  him  with  a  violent  death,  so  un- 
measured was  the  hatred  manifested  throughout 
the  Prussian  nobility  for  a  man  suspected  of  shar- 
ing the  views  of  his  English  wife  in  matters  of 
government.  Had  he  been  a  socialist  or  a  paid 
agent  of  Queen  Victoria,  he  could  not  have  evoked 
more  slanderous  or  malicious  comments.  He  was 
known  to  have  entertained  George  von  Bunsen 
and  many  other  "liberals,"  and  his  wife  made  no 
secret  of  enjoying  the  society  of  artistic,  scientific, 
and  literary  notables  without  reference  to  creed. 


Prussian  Militarism  71 

All  this  was  blasphemy  in  Berlin  minds.  One  of 
the  first  acts  of  Emperor  Frederick  was  to  select 
for  decoration  five  "liberals,"  and  we  may  measure 
the  helplessness  of  this  Emperor  by  the  fact  that 
he  had  to  submit  when  Bismarck  refused  to  carry 
out  this  wish  of  a  dying  sovereign.  Needless  to 
say,  Bunsen  was  on  this  list. 

It  was  even  a  constructive  crime  for  the  sons  of 
Bunsen  to  visit  their  father.  In  the  theory  of 
Prussian  military  law  it  was  inconceivable  that  a 
Prussian  officer  should  have  any  consanguinity 
with  anybody  whose  view  of  monarchy  was  not 
primarily  Bismarckian.  As  I  pen  these  lines  in 
a  land  where  soldiers  and  policemen  are  a  negligi- 
ble quantity,  and  consider  that  to  the  north  of 
me  is  a  frontier  3000  miles  long  with  scarce  a  single 
bayonet  to  guard  against  a  military  raid,  and  that 
this  frontier  separates  two  very  wealthy  and  war- 
like states  each  larger  than  the  whole  of  Europe, 
I  am  conscious  that  the  American  or  Canadian 
who  should  pick  up  this  little  volume  could  with 
difficulty  grasp  the  social  conditions  in  the  Prussia 
of  my  time,  where  each  man  reads  what  the  govern- 
ment gives  him  to  read,  marches  as  the  drill- 
sergeant  teaches  him  to  march,  makes  his  bow 
according  to  the  formula  of  the  King's  Court- 
Chamberlain,  marries  as  the  colonel  of  his  regiment 


72  Prussian  Memories 

prescribes,  brings  up  his  children  on  a  plan  dictated 
by  the  Minister  of  Education,  and  never  thinks 
until  he  has  first  consulted  the  oracle  of  Potsdam. 
The  universities  appear  to  be  an  exception,  for  the 
amount  of  research,  compilation,  dissection,  cata- 
loguing, and  memorizing  done  by  all  professors 
and  some  students  is  enormous.  Akademische 
Freiheit  flies  on  every  university  flag-pole,  but 
professors  are  State  officials  as  the  university  is  a 
State  institution.  Treitschke  and  Sybel  died  rich 
in  medals  granted  by  a  grateful  sovereign,  for 
did  not  these  men  glorify  the  Prussian  State? 
Virchow  and  Mommsen  felt  fortunate  in  not 
having  to  wear  the  prison  garb,  for  they  were  men 
of  mighty  minds  and  had  never  been  completely 
Prussianized.  Both  died  social  pariahs  in  Berlin, 
and  if  ever  the  victories  of  Rheims  and  Louvain 
should  be  celebrated  by  an  equestrian  monument 
of  a  Prussian  war-lord  and  the  great  men  of  this 
day  be  grouped  about  its  base  as  are  those  on  the 
statue  of  Frederick  the  Great,  we  may  confidently 
look  for  a  Virchow  or  a  Mommsen  at  the  same 
relative  point  where  we  found  the  great  Konigs- 
berg  philosopher  of  the  eighteenth  century — under 
the  horse's  tail. 

Virchow  was  once  elected  Head  of  the  Berlin 
University;  but  to  the  scandal  of  the  scientific 


Scholar  vs.  Soldier  73 

world  and  the  joy  of  Prussian  society,  the  King 
vetoed,  until  a  deadlock  was  threatened  between 
the  Crown  and  the  University,  when  the  King 
grudgingly  permitted  this  prince  of  pathologists 
to  accept  his  election,  a  tremendous  tribute  to 
popular  madness  in  the  eyes  of  junkerdom,  but  to 
Virchow  himself  a  matter  of  as  little  importance 
as  an  honorary  Doctor  of  Laws  to  an  Edison  or 
a  Kipling.  It  was  my  fortune  to  have  met  Vir- 
chow under  most  favourable  circumstances  and 
to  have  exchanged  views  with  him  on  matters  of 
English  and  American  political  life,  but  I  did  not 
know  the  degraded  rank  assigned  to  him  by  Prus- 
sian high  society  until  we  met  at  a  great  Court 
function  where  thousands  of  military  uniforms 
glittered  and  clattered  in  the  light  of  as  many 
chandeliers.  Wandering  through  these  great 
rooms  in  search  of  another  world  than  that  of 
barracks,  I  espied  a  short  figure,  topped  by  a  noble 
dome,  and  keen  eyes  peering  from  behind  gold- 
rimmed  spectacles.  He  had  shrunk  away  into  a 
window  alcove  where  his  academic  robes  suggested 
the  shabby  gown  of  a  verger  when  contrasted  with 
the  gaudy  dress  of  orthodox  courtiers.  And  this 
was  the  head  of  Germany's  greatest  university, 
the  man  who  could  not  have  set  his  foot  upon  the 
soil  of  any  civilized  country  without  being  hailed 


74  Prussian  Memories 

by  grateful  millions  as  the  first  of  scientists  and 
one  of  the  world's  benefactors.  Here  he  was 
beaming  with  kindliness  and  emitting  an  aura 
of  spiritual  vitality  incomparably  superior  to  a 
wilderness  of  gold  lace  and  Red  Eagle  decorations; 
yet  not  a  courtier  would  have  dared  stop  and 
speak  to  him  for  fear  of  social  contamination. 

Where  are  the  great  men  of  Germany?  one  asks 
instinctively  when  first  invited  to  the  Berlin 
Court.  Where  are  the  great  poets,  dramatists, 
historians,  inventors,  painters,  sculptors,  engin- 
eers, singers,  actors?  A  diplomatic  friend  begged 
me  to  dine  with  him  and  asked  me  to  name  any 
whom  I  desired  to  meet.  Of  course,  I  asked  for 
Germany's  first  Shakespearian,  Ludwig  Barnay, 
him  whose  bust  can  be  seen  today  in  the  Players' 
Club,  the  friend  of  Edwin  Booth,  a  man  who  was 
the  Henry  Irving  or  Forbes  Robertson  of  his  day. 
But  my  host  rolled  up  his  eyes  in  horror  and  said : 
"No,  no,  impossible,  an  actor — nobody  would 
come!"  So  I  surrendered  and  learned  my  lesson, 
that  to  find  the  Barnays  and  the  Mommsens,  the 
Virchows  and  the  Helmholtzes  of  Germany  it  is  not 
on  monuments  such  as  Frederick  the  Great's  or 
even  at  the  Prussian  Court  that  we  should  make 
our  search.  The  wife  of  Professor  Helmholtz 
said  to  me  in  angry  tones:  "For  social  purposes  I 


Scholar  vs.  Soldier  75 

would  rather  have  the  youngest  Prussian  lieuten- 
ant in  the  Berlin  garrison  as  husband  than  my 
illustrious  excellency  of  a  scientist."  She  spoke  in 
anger  under  provocation  and  when  her  anger  had 
subsided  perhaps  she  changed  her  mind,  but  I 
doubt  it. 


CHAPTER  IX 

Barnay — Booth — Art  in  Berlin — Imperial  Influence 
on  the  Stage. 

WILLIAM  II.  ascended  the  throne  as  the  idol 
of  Prussian  hussar  officers  although  men  of 
the  General  Staff  and  those  with  the  experience 
of  1870  blended  their  enthusiasm  with  the  hope 
that  he  might  imitate  the  caution  of  his  illustrious 
grandfather  and  not  seek  to  wage  war  without  a 
Moltke  or  von  Roon.  The  Emperor  personally 
was  something  of  a  Prince  Hal  in  conversation, 
with  a  happy  manner  of  placing  at  their  ease 
strangers  and  foreigners  whom  he  interrogated 
with  pleasure.  Never  yet  have  I  met  an  English- 
man, American,  or  even  Frenchman  who  did  not 
speak  enthusiastically  of  the  Emperor's  personal 
charm  and  inquisitive  vigour.  If  it  was  a  Parisian 
actress,  he  delighted  her  with  a  rhapsody  on  Moliere 
and  the  Comedie  Franchise;  with  an  Englishman, 
he  was  all  for  yachting,  steeple-chasing,  or  a  day 
on  the  moors;  and  if  the  family  of  an  American 

76 


The  Personality  of  William  II.      77 

millionaire  was  found  floating  in  a  Norwegian 
fjord,  he  would  leave  upon  their  mind  the  impres- 
sion that  he  cared  only  for  the  New  York  Stock 
Exchange,  the  steel  mills  of  Pittsburg,  or  the  cotton 
plantations  of  the  Gulf  States.  But  all  this  was 
personal  and  limited  strictly  to  the  moment.  He 
visited  sculptors,  painters,  architects,  bridge- 
builders  and  ship-designers;  he  offered  them  to- 
bacco from  his  own  pocket  supply  and  joked  with 
them  over  a  glass  of  beer;  but  when  it  came  to 
matters  of  Court  ceremonial  the  principles  of 
Prussian  tradition  were  rigidly  maintained  and 
Frederick  the  Great's  dictum,  that  only  nobles  are 
eligible  to  the  corps  of  Prussian  officers,  is  still  the 
rule  whatever  exceptions  may  occasionally  occur. 
Barnay,  had  he  been  an  Englishman,  would 
have  been  knighted  and  no  great  house  but  would 
have  sought  his  presence.  In  Berlin,  I  had  to  slip 
out  at  the  kitchen  entrance  of  the  Palace  and  hurry 
far  from  glitter  of  decorations  and  chandeliers 
in  order  to  realize  that  Prussia  was  more  than  a 
military  machine-shop.  Barnay  had  acted  with 
Booth  in  Germany,  and  he  spoke  of  the  great 
American  tragedian  as  not  only  the  greatest  of  all 
Shakespearian  actors  but  as  a  revelation  in  the 
field  of  art.  Booth  knew  no  German,  and  he 
acted  with  Germans  who  knew  no  English — but 


78  Prussian  Memories 

spoke  the  German  text  in  response  to  his  English. 
Nor  was  the  German  translation  always  the  same, 
for  Shakespeare  is  to  the  German  poet  what  Homer 
and  Horace  have  been  to  the  metrical  pundits  of 
England.  Booth,  moreover,  never  gave  a  rehears- 
al; and  a  strange  company  of  German  actors  would 
face  their  Shylock  or  their  Othello  for  the  first 
time  and  within  a  few  minutes  thereafter  Booth 
would  be  seeking  in  English  the  life  of  a  German 
Antonio  or  strangling  the  gutturals  of  a  Teutonic 
Desdemona,  the  while  cursing  her  with  British 
expletives.  Never  has  the  world  perhaps  wit- 
nessed so  magnificent  a  triumph  of  professional 
knowledge,  dramatic  genius,  and  uniformity  of 
stage  drilling  as  this  combination  of  Edwin  Booth 
acting  in  every  notable  town  of  Germany  from 
Hamburg  to  Vienna;  having  no  company  of  his 
own  but  enjoying  in  each  theatre  the  cordial 
welcome  of  brother-actors  to  whom  the  lines  of 
Shakespeare  were  so  much  a  part  of  their  life  that 
they  could  follow  its  spirit  even  when  expressed 
by  foreign  words,  just  as  a  child  can  understand 
the  Lord's  Prayer  or  the  Ten  Commandments  in 
any  tongue. 

The  Prussian  stage  can  produce  no  great  actors 
merely  because  no  great  actor  could  survive  the 
barrack-room  methods  of  a  Prussian  Hof  Inten- 


The  Prussian  Stage  79 

dant.  The  Emperor  is  the  impresario  in  chief, 
and  under  him  are  lieutenants  who  conceive  of 
Shakespeare  as  a  product  of  Prussian  Kultur  and 
consequently  amenable  to  military  discipline. 
Every  Prussian  actor  makes  love  at  exactly  the 
same  angle,  and  when  the  hero  dies  or  fights  or 
commits  murder  the  Prussian  has  the  supreme 
satisfaction  of  reflecting  that  death,  murder,  love- 
making,  and  the  other  stock  features  of  the  drama 
are  perpetrated  on  every  stage  of  Prussia  in  exactly 
the  same  manner,  according  to  paragraphs  pre- 
pared by  the  Minister  of  War  or  his  dramatic 
lieutenant.  A  departure  from  orthodox  dying  and 
declamation  on  the  Prussian  stage  would  render 
the  impresario  of  that  particular  theatre  suspect 
on  the  ground  of  incomplete  patriotic  education. 
The  aristocracy  of  Prussia  would  resent  an  inno- 
vation in  this  field  as  promptly  as  they  would  the 
failure  to  click  the  heels  together  when  bowing. 

Judge  then  of  the  stupefaction  in  Court  circles 
when  Edwin  Booth  swooped  down  upon  this 
paradise  of  the  conventional  drama  and  not  only 
spoke  Shakespeare  in  the  bard's  own  language, 
but  insisted  upon  fighting  and  making  love,  de- 
claiming, deceiving,  and  laughing  without  the 
slightest  reference  to  the  Prussian  drill-regulations, 
—even  persisted  in  dying  a  natural  death. 


8o  Prussian  Memories 

Barnay  spoke  of  Booth  as  of  his  lord  and  master; 
and  other  German  actors  whom  I  subsequently 
met  told  me  that  nothing  in  their  dramatic  experi- 
ence had  revealed  to  them  so  much  of  grandeur 
in  Shakespeare  as  the  interpretation  of  this  Ameri- 
can artist.  A  Hungarian  actor  told  me  that  Booth 
could  break  the  laws  of  every  impresario  with 
impunity.  He  was  perpetually  smoking,  and  would 
cast  away  his  cigarette  only  at  the  moment  of 
appearing  before  the  audience.  The  fire-wardens 
watched  him  anxiously,  but  in  vain  sought  to 
modify  his  habits  by  reference  to  strict  rules  about 
smoking.  In  Vienna,  crowds  of  her  most  beautiful 
and  most  exquisitely  dressed  daughters  mobbed 
him  at  the  stage  door,  eager  for  a  touch  of  his 
hand  or  the  privilege  of  kissing  the  border  of  his 
cape.  Anything  that  had  been  his  was  keenly 
collected,  whether  a  pencil,  a  fragment  of  paper, 
or  a  half -smoked  cigarette.  The  actors  worshipped 
his  person,  his  intellect,  his  mastery  in  their  craft 
— from  this  you  may  measure  the  delirium  of 
enthusiasm  which  animated  the  less  professional 
but  equally  receptive  lovers  of  Shakespeare  who 
for  the  first  time  saw  the  greatness  of  his  works 
made  greater  still  by  a  power  for  which  nothing 
in  their  past  experience  had  prepared  them. 

Booth  himself  spoke  feelingly  of  these  days  to 


Edwin  Booth  81 

me  and  he  cheerfully  referred  to  them  as  the  high- 
est professional  triumph  of  his  life.  George  von 
Bunsen  never  missed  a  performance  of  Booth  in 
Berlin,  and  he  who  was  familiar  with  the  best  on 
every  great  stage  told  me  that  our  foremost  actor 
had  achieved  in  the  Prussian  capital  a  success  not 
only  complete  as  an  intellectual  effort  but  almost 
dangerously  revolutionary  in  the  extent  to  which 
he  had  weakened  many  traditions  hitherto  held 
sacred. 

Perhaps  it  should  be  said  in  parenthesis  that 
in  Prussia  the  stage  is  a  species  of  university 
extension  planned  notably  for  women  and  child- 
ren. The  impresarios  are  for  the  most  part  like 
the  clergymen  and  the  professors  salaried  serv- 
ants of  the  State;  the  actors  at  Court  theatres 
are,  so  to  speak,  fixed  for  life,  and  can  retire  on  a 
pension  like  other  functionaries.  The  plays  are 
selected  by  or  with  the  approval  of  the  Crown,  and 
all  respectable  Germans  subscribe  to  their  seats  at 
a  theatre  much  as  we  rent  a  pew  in  church.  The 
American  idea  that  we  seek  the  playhouse  as  a 
distraction  more  or  less  frivolous,  is  foreign  to  a 
well-bred  Prussian;  on  the  contrary,  he  takes  his 
wife  and  children  to  the  State-subventioned 
theatre  confident  that  nothing  can  be  performed 
without  the  permission  of  a  patriarchal  govern- 
o 


82  Prussian  Memories 

ment  and  that  consequently  classical  and  patriotic 
drama  will  be  the  rule. 

William  II.  is  perhaps  too  much  of  an  impresario, 
for  he  not  only  manifests  personal  interest  in  all 
the  theatres  under  his  control,  but  by  a  shrug  or 
a  movement  of  the  lips  can  discourage  a  play  of 
great  merit.  Were  he  a  ruler  over  English  or 
French  subjects  he  would  do  little  harm  by  his 
intervention  in  details  of  architecture,  painting, 
sculpture,  singing  societies,  theatrical  representa- 
tions, and  the  whole  circle  of  the  humanities.  But 
having  under  him  a  people  so  docile  intellectually 
as  those  over  whom  he  rules  as  a  demigod,  he  can 
give  a  character  to  the  literature  and  art  of  his 
day  that  is  wholly  Prussian  and  patriotic  yet  bad 
artistically.  The  age  of  William  II.  promises  to 
be  as  memorable  for  Germany  as  that  of  Ludwig 
I.  of  Bavaria  or  the  Fourteenth  Louis  of  France, 
but  as  the  Bavarian  protector  of  Lola  Montez 
was  conspicuous  for  the  number  rather  than  for 
the  wit  and  beauty  of  those  in  his  harem,  so  Wil- 
liam II.  will  be  gratefully  remembered  rather  for 
the  quantity  of  monuments  he  has  erected  than 
by  any  single  contribution  in  the  domain  of  the 
Muses.  Berlin  is  today  a  byword  amongst  artists 
for  mediocrity  if  not  vulgarity  in  the  way  of 
Imperial  statuary  and  architecture.  To  one  who 


Berlin  Art  83 

is  fresh  from  the  semi-Latin  Bavarian  capital  and 
who  after  a  night  in  the  train  suddenly  finds  him- 
self in  Berlin  face  to  face  with  a  wilderness  of 
stone  and  marble  representing  millions  of  marks 
paid  out  to  architects,  sculptors,  and  stone-masons, 
the  melancholy  conclusion  forces  itself  upon  him 
that  all  this  Imperial  quarry  would  scarcely  repay 
to  a  successful  French  army  the  cost  of  carriage, — 
at  least  not  the  latter-day  stuff.  Yet  the  speci- 
mens in  Berlin  are  not  a  criterion  of  what  Germany 
could  produce  today  if  her  best  artists  had  been 
consulted.  Berlin  has  more  painters,  sculptors, 
architects,  and  engineers  than  any  other  German 
city — at  least  a  larger  proportion  of  money-makers 
in  these  departments.  But  the  city  as  a  whole 
disguises  this  fact  with  Prussian  thoroughness 
and  the  stranger  is  made  to  feel  that  while  the 
streets  are  clean  and  the  buildings  uniformly 
placed,  and  every  detail  of  municipal  activity 
attended  to  with  the  intelligence  and  efficiency 
of  a  military  camp,  there  is  scarce  a  monument, 
square,  blind  alley,  or  nook  where  we  would  linger 
as  we  would  in  dozens  I  could  name  in  Paris, 
London,  or  Munich.  And  the  people  reflect  this 
perfection  of  mediocrity — they  are  all  soldiers  or 
merchants  or  officials  or  artisans,  each  one  labelled 
and  dressed  as  per  catalogue  and  wholly  incap- 


84  Prussian  Memories 

able  of  being  mistaken  for  anything  individual 
or  interesting.  Occasionally  there  obtrudes  a 
civilized  stranger  from  Boston,  Paris,  or  Oxford 
and  he  is  at  once  stared  at  and  audibly  discussed, 
for  the  Berlin  burgher  prides  himself  upon  a  thirst 
for  knowledge  and  bluntness  of  speech  which  in 
older  and  more  civilized  communities  would  be  re- 
garded as  provincial  curiosity,  not  to  say  rudeness. 


CHAPTER  X 

Berlin — Sewage  Disposal — Dr.  Koch— Arrest  in  Dres- 
den— Also  in   Munich — Law   Paragraphs — 
Cats — Kittens — Canals 

'T'HE  social  infirmity  of  the  Prussian  to  which 
-*•  I  referred  in  the  last  chapter  is  perhaps  the 
chief  reason  why  in  matters  of  military  and  mu- 
nicipal efficiency  this  Baltic  Empire  has  become 
a  pattern  to  the  world.  When  first  I  saw  Berlin 
the  population  equalled  that  of  a  provincial 
English  or  American  town ;  water  was  fetched  from 
pumps  at  the  street  corners;  latrines  were  ex- 
cavated by  well-disciplined  scavengers,  and  the 
only  sewers  were  the  deep  gutters,  of  whose  con- 
tents no  one  could  doubt  who  was  ever  present 
when  they  were  being  swept  down  towards  the 
canals  and  the  Spree.  The  streets  were  paved 
with  cobble-stones  and  the  rattling  of  the  drays 
and  droskies  made  hideous  noises.  Diseases  from 
tainted  water  were  common  and  on  the  whole  it 
was  difficult  to  think  of  any  one  selecting  Berlin 
for  residence  unless  compelled  by  necessity. 

35 


86  Prussian  Memories 

But  the  Sarmatic  docility  which  makes  an  ideal 
soldier  enables  the  government  to  work  out  a 
scheme  and  apply  it  practically  without  being  at 
every  step  hampered,  as  we  are,  by  so-called  vested 
interests  or  faddists  or  ignorant  representatives 
of  still  more  ignorant  electors.  The  war  of  1870 
made  of  Berlin  the  capital  of  a  great  empire  and, 
without  any  calling  of  noisy  conventions,  the 
Prussian  State  and  city  authorities  appointed 
the  men  most  likely  to  achieve  the  desired  results, 
and  lo!  as  though  by  magic,  the  smells  from  the 
gutters  ceased;  the  streets  were  made  over  after 
the  pattern  of  London  and  Paris;  the  latrine- 
waggons  and  scavenger  gangs  disappeared;  old 
city  pumps  were  bought  up  as  curios;  drays  and 
droskies  glided  gracefully  along  over  perfectly 
laid  asphalt;  the  waters  of  the  Spree  suddenly 
became  fragrant  and  furnished  wholesome  drink 
to  millions.  On  the  outskirts  of  the  metropolis 
large  tracts  were  laid  out  in  gardens  and  orchards, 
and  these  under  scientific  supervision  were  daily 
supplied  with  city  waste  in  such  dilution  as  to 
produce  phenomenal  crops  and  yet  cause  no  injury 
from  a  sanitary  point  of  view. 

The  Chairman  of  the  Municipal  Committee 
having  this  matter  in  charge  invited  me  to  visit 
these  farms  in  company  with  Dr.  Koch  (of  bacilli 


Sewage  Disposal  87 

fame)  and  a  deputation  from  Paris  officially 
charged  with  the  study  of  sewage  disposal.  We 
inspected  fields  flooded  by  sewage.  The  ditches 
surrounding  these  fields  were  filled  with  water 
that  had  but  recently  been  pumped  out  from  the 
sewers  of  Berlin.  Dr.  Margraff,  my  host,  assured 
us  that  the  water  we  saw  in  these  ditches  was 
chemically  pure  for  drinking  purposes.  We  all 
shuddered,  particularly  Colonel  Swaine,  Her 
Britannic  Majesty's  military  attache  at  the  Ho- 
henzollern  Court.  The  most  notable  figure  in  bac- 
teriology endorsed  the  invitation  of  Dr.  Margraff, 
but  shuddering  did  not  cease.  What  was  to  be 
done?  Here  was  an  official  statement  received 
with  doubt — nay,  even  disgust.  All  eyes  were 
turned  on  me,  for  the  others  were,  after  all,  of  the 
uninitiated,  whereas  trust  in  Prussian  omnipo- 
tence was  the  creed  I  had  never  failed  to  preach 
and  could  not  now  hesitate  to  practise.  So  with 
a  short  prayer,  as  one  diving  into  a  tropical  basin 
full  of  sharks,  I  snatched  the  proffered  goblet  from 
the  hands  of  the  great  germ-doctor  and  drained 
it  in  one  gulp,  whilst  my  colleagues  gazed  intently 
as  men  who  look  for  signs  of  germinating  disease 
if  not  instantaneous  collapse.  Needless  to  say 
Prussian  efficiency  was  vindicated  once  more;  the 
water  reminded  me  in  its  innocuous  tastelessness 


88  Prussian  Memories 

of  filtered  or  boiled  water — suggestive  of  ship- 
board tanks,  cholera,  and  Oriental  cities.  Yet 
not  even  after  this  act  of  devotion  would  any  other 
make  the  experiment,  and  to  this  day  who  knows 
if  they  are  convinced?  Who  knows  if  they  credit 
Americans  with  similarity  of  internal  organs  or 
equal  sensitiveness  to  fever-germs? 

On  first  reaching  Berlin  my  father  had  thought 
of  placing  me  in  a  big  German  day-school,  and 
according  to  State  regulation  it  was  the  teacher's 
duty  to  register  not  only  the  names  of  his  pupils 
but  their  pedigree  and  theological  bias.  This  was 
all  before  my  happy  days  with  Professor  Schill- 
bach  and  my  German  was  far  from  adequate  to 
the  subtleties  of  religious  symbolism.  The  teacher 
affected,  as  do  so  many  of  my  Prussians,  an  abrupt, 
irritable,  and  military  manner  disconcerting  to  a 
youngster  especially  when  dealing  with  a  sacred 
subject.  When  my  name  was  called  I  stood  up 
timidly.  He  got  the  Bigelow  part  all  right,  al- 
though suggesting  that  it  was  probably  a  corrup- 
tion of  Bulow  and  that  I  must  have  been  a 
renegade  Prussian  in  some  previous  incarnation. 
When  I  told  him  my  first  name  was  Poultney  he 
smiled  and  entered  me  as  Paul,  remarking  upon 
the  comic  way  in  which  language  becomes  per- 
verted when  carried  to  remote  and  unkulturized 


"  Not  a  Christian — An  American  "    89 

parts  of  the  world.  The  mild  protest  which  I 
endeavoured  to  make  against  this  mutilation  of 
a  revered  English  ancestor  only  confirmed  this 
pedagogue  in  his  philological  dictum,  and  the 
curious  may  some  day  be  puzzled  to  find  that  I 
am  officially  registered  under  the  name  of  the 
great  apostle  rather  than  that  of  George  II. 's 
prime  minister.  Then  the  teacher  asked  me 
sternly :  Sind  Sie  Judisch  ?  No,  not  even  the  name 
of  Paul  could  make  a  Jew  of  me.  Sind  Sie  Katho- 
lisch  ?  and  I  could  answer  that  question  easily. 
But  when  he  severely  challenged  me  to  say  that 
I  was  Evangelisch  I  was  indeed  at  a  loss,  for  I  had 
never  heard  the  word  in  German,  nor  did  I  then 
know  its  meaning  even  in  English,  save  as  a  vague 
state  of  spiritual  beatitude.  So  I  looked  no  doubt 
as  I  felt,  very  vacant  and  helpless,  and  the  teacher 
snarled  out  the  same  question  over  again  with  no 
better  result.  I  might  have  been  cuffed  and 
carried  away  in  disgrace  for  a  more  formal  punish- 
ment had  not  a  boy  in  the  back  row  relieved  the 
embarrassing  situation  by  shouting  out  in  tri- 
umph :  Der  ist  ja  kein  Christ — ;  der  ist  ja  ein  Ameri- 
kaner  I  He's  not  a  Christian ;  he's  an  American ! 

The  teacher  was  now  quite  satisfied,  nor  was 
this  the  only  time  that  the  being  American  saved 
me  from  awkward  consequences. 


90  Prussian  Memories 

It  was  in  1889, 1  think,  that  I  had  been  spending 
the  whole  day  studying  the  battlefield  of  Bautzen, 
memorable  in  the  campaign  of  1813,  and  had 
reached  the  railway-station  just  as  the  last  train 
was  moving  out  in  the  direction  of  Dresden,  where 
I  had  made  my  headquarters  for  similar  studies — 
I  being  then  hard  at  work  on  the  first  volume  of 
my  history.  It  was  a  critical  moment  to  me,  so 
I  sprang  forward,  knocking  aside  one  or  two  func- 
tionaries whose  business  it  was  to  stop  me;  I 
caught  the  hand  rail  of  the  last  car  as  it  rolled  out 
of  the  station  and,  with  an  acrobatic  elasticity 
recalled  with  envy  in  my  declining  years,  I  swooped 
through  the  window  and  sprawled  amid  the  skirts 
and  boots  of  the  scandalized  passengers.  These 
had  not  the  time  to  scream  for  assistance  when  at 
the  window  appeared  the  hot  and  angry  face  of 
one  in  authority,  who  rated  me  soundly  as  a  breaker 
of  the  law  and  continued  his  scolding  by  dwelling 
on  the  danger  to  my  own  person  and  possible  loss 
to  the  community.  He  would  no  doubt  have  edi- 
fied his  congregation  for  the  rest  of  the  journey 
had  not  his  ticket-collecting  duties  called  him  to 
other  windows.  But  before  leaving  me  he  pro- 
nounced me  his  prisoner  and  that  I  should 
be  taken  in  custody  on  arrival  at  the  Saxon 
capital. 


Red-tape  and  Railroads  91 

And  sure  enough  there  stood  the  gendarmes 
with  their  carbines  and  I  was  escorted  to  the 
court-room  and  told  to  wait  for  the  arrival  of  my 
judge  or  executioner,  who  made  his  appearance  in 
a  red  cap  and  a  face  almost  as  red,  so  soon  as  the 
platform  business  incident  to  the  train  arrival  had 
been  dispatched.  Assuming  the  same  tone  as 
the  Prussian  pedagogue  who  probed  my  theological 
deficiencies,  he  first  reduced  to  writing  everything 
for  which  blanks  were  provided  by  State  authority, 
and  then  having  enumerated  the  various  crimes 
incidental  to  my  escape  from  Bautzen  and  the 
various  numbered  paragraphs,  any  one  of  which 
would  have  discouraged  a  less  hopeful  nature,  he 
pounded  the  table  magisterially  and,  after  the 
manner  of  one  saying  "The  proposition  is  unan- 
swerable yet  we  will  be  indulgent,"  he  roared  out: 
"And  now  have  you  anything  to  say  before 
sentence  shall  be  passed?" 

What  could  I  say?  Or  rather  what  could  be 
said  in  a  case  where  paragraphs  had  been  flagrantly 
violated,  where  the  witnesses  all  agreed  in  their 
damning  testimony,  and  where  the  culprit  stood 
arraigned  at  a  bar  that  had  no  sympathy  with 
the  convenient  plea  of  brainstorm?  So  I  meekly 
bowed  my  head,  recognized  the  wisdom  of  the 
judge  and  his  paragraphs,  lamented  my  ignorance 


92  Prussian  Memories 

of  civilized  customs,  and  above  all  invoked  extenu- 
ating circumstances.  I  pointed  out  that  this 
was  my  first  offence,  and  that  I  had  but  recently 
emerged  from  the  great  American  jungle,  where 
railway  stations  were  necessarily  few  and  where 
the  aborigines  (sometimes  called  straphangers) 
exercised  their  prehensile  faculties  in  boarding 
the  infrequent  and  very  slow  trains  with  which 
that  country  was  equipped.  If  the  recording 
angel  had  at  that  moment  observed  the  gradual 
change  from  ferocity  to  curiosity  and  thence  to 
sympathy  for  my  benighted  bringing-up,  I  am 
sure  he  or  she  would  have  forgiven  the  trifling 
adornments  to  my  simple  tale,  especially  as  on 
that  night  there  was  a  particularly  good  opera;  and 
besides  I  was  giving  to  my  inquisitor  scientific 
satisfaction  along  a  most  congenial  line  of  Teu- 
tonic speculation.  So  after  looking  at  me  dubi- 
ously and  somewhat  pityingly  he  said  he  would 
suspend  judgment  for  one  week  if  I  would  remain 
on  parole  at  the  hotel  where  I  was  quartered — 
and  of  course  I  never  heard  again  from  this  con- 
scientious paragraphist.  But  the  Emperor  laughed 
loud  and  long  when  I  told  him  the  story,  and  I  can 
see  the  Dresden  station-master  questioning  his 
Brockhaus  regarding  the  relative  speed  of  the 
Twentieth  Century  Limited  and  the  Dresden- 


A  "Three-ton  Barge"  Canoe       93 

Bautzen  express  and  shaking  his  head  and  com- 
menting on  the  strange  ways  of  redskins. 

Another  time  I  was  made  to  quake  with  almost 
equal  fear,  although  rather  for  purse  than  life. 
In  my  little  cruising  canoe,  whose  net  weight  was 
only  sixty  pounds,  and  which  with  sails,  stores, 
and  camping-kit  made  but  an  easy  load  for  two 
men  at  a  lock,  weir,  or  carry,  I  was  in  the  habit  of 
asking  no  questions  of  toll-keepers,  but,  invoking 
the  help  of  a  passing  peasant,  would  whip  the 
little  craft  out  of  the  water  and  slip  her  in  again 
on  the  other  side  of  the  obstacle. 

At  the  first  lock  north  of  Spandau,  on  my  way 
to  the  Mecklenburgh  Lakes,  there  was  a  counter- 
part of  my  Dresden  judge,  who  asked  me  if  I  had 
paid  toll  and  I  answered  no.  I  asked  how  much, 
and  he  said  gravely  that  he  must  consult  his  book; 
for  he  also  was  reared  in  the  Kingdom  of  Para- 
graphs. I  followed  him  into  the  toll-house  and 
he  produced  a  large  sheet  of  paper  with  much 
printing  and  many  columns  surmounted  by  the 
Black  Eagle  of  Prussia.  He  asked  me  the  tonnage 
of  my  boat  and  its  character.  I  told  him  it  was 
a  clinker-built  lap-streak  American  Rob  Roy, 
known  in  canoe  circles  as  a  "sunbeam"  pattern 
cruiser,  with  two  masts,  centre-board,  and  drop- 
rudder.  In  vain  he  searched  his  paragraphs; 


94  Prussian  Memories 

there  never  had  been  such  a  thing'  on  a  Prussian 
canal,  and  if  the  Prussian  State  provided  no  column 
in  which  it  could  be  officially  entered  manifestly 
my  Caribbee  had  no  existence,  at  least  in  the  eyes 
of  a  conscientious  official.  He  was  much  an- 
noyed with  me  because  there  was  a  minimum  tax 
on  a  three-ton  barge,  regarded  as  the  smallest 
craft  recognized  by  lock-keepers;  and  finally  he 
compromised  with  his  conscience  by  declaring  me 
as  commanding  a  canoe  of  several  tons  burden 
with  a  full  crew  and  an  assorted  cargo.  "But," 
said  I,  "is  it  honourable  that  you  should  make  me 
pay  duty  on  a  three-ton  cargo-boat  when  my 
canoe  is  not  half  so  big  as  a  dinghy?"  The  lock- 
keeper  saw  my  point  and  pondered,  but  finally 
concluded  that,  as  some  injustice  had  to  be  done, 
the  interests  of  his  royal  master  must  take  pre- 
cedence, and  then  I  wondered  whether  the  law 
permitted  him  to  accept  a  check  in  a  financial 
transaction  of  such  magnitude,  not  to  say  delicacy. 
He  laboured  long  over  my  document,  made  many 
additions  and  subtractions,  filled  in  every  waste 
space  with  German  figures  or  commentary,  and 
finally  presented  me  a  bill  for  the  grand  total, 
which  I  gazed  at  first  with  doubt  and  then  with 
relief  for  the  whole  amount,  including  more  than 
an  hour  of  precious  time  wasted  by  an  important 


"Verboten"  95 

official,  to  say  nothing  of  cost  in  the  matter  of 
paper,  ink,  and  sand, — all  this  machinery  was  at 
work  for  the  single  purpose  of  extracting  from  me 
the  sum  of  fifteen  pfennigs,  or  about  three  cents  of 
American  money.  When  it  was  all  done,  my  feel- 
ings were  divided  between  irritation  at  the  loss  of 
time  and  mortification  at  the  smallness  of  the 
amount  involved,  but  it  taught  me  a  valuable 
lesson  and  henceforth  Caribbee  negotiated  locks 
without  interfering  with  the  serious  duties  of  the 
lock-keeper. 

But  why  multiply  instances  to  illustrate  the 
proverbial  efficiency  of  the  great  Prussian  machine? 
The  stranger  who  crosses  her  frontier  has  hence- 
forth nothing  more  important  in  life  than  to  pay 
his  bills  and  obey  the  law.  Signboards  innumer- 
able greet  him  at  every  turn  of  the  way  and  he 
must  read  them  all,  which  ensures  a  leisurely 
progress  replete  with  legal  information.  So  hedged 
in  is  the  German  by  rules  that  a  signboard  is  now 
almost  as  good  as  a  policeman  for  preventive 
purposes.  Cherries  and  plums  grow  by  the  way- 
side and  not  even  a  small  boy  dares  to  question 
their  status:  that  any  man  should  deliberately 
disobey  a  signpost  armed  with  a  paragraph  is 
something  of  which  only  an  anarchist  or  an  Ameri- 
can could  be  guilty,  at  least  in  German  eyes.  It  is 


96  Prussian  Memories 

forbidden  to  ride  on  a  bicycle  through  the  big 
park  of  Munich,  but  as  it  was  raining  very  hard, 
the  park  apparently  empty,  and  darkness  ap- 
proaching, I  wheeled  merrily  along  the  forbidden 
ways,  happy  in  the  thought  that  I  was  shortening 
the  journey  to  dry  clothes  and  supper.  But  just 
where  I  least  expected  it,  a  policeman  emerged 
from  a  shelter  and  claimed  me  as  his  prisoner. 
Now  a  New  York  cop  would  have  clubbed  me  or 
at  least  haled  me  before  a  police-court  judge, 
but  in  Munich  manners  are  patriarchal,  and  as 
this  was  evidently  a  novelty  in  the  life  of  my  captor 
he  pulled  out  his  book  and  commenced  my  bio- 
graphy; and  I  tremble  today  at  the  joy  of  an 
enemy  should  he  be  curious  or  vengeful  enough 
to  track  me  by  the  police-court  records  of  the 
Old  World,  where  my  thirst  for  knowledge  has 
been  gratified  by  an  occasional  disregard  of  other- 
wise perfectly  proper  paragraphs.  Each  question 
addressed  by  the  indignant  policeman  was  an- 
swered by  me  in  a  diffuse  English  sentence,  and 
when  he  enquired  why  I  ignored  a  distinct  penalty 
for  using  these  sacred  precincts  in  a  manner  so 
sacrilegious,  I  launched  out  upon  what  I  could 
remember  of  Daniel  Webster's  famous  peroration 
on  the  Haines  Resolution  and  did  not  cease  until 
this  disgusted  and  dripping  custodian  waved  me 


Fined  97 

out  of  his  sight  as  a  hopeless  case;  and  once  more 
I  revelled  in  recalling  the  maxim,  that  there  is  a 
special  Providence  for  children,  drunkards,  and 
Americans.  And  when  a  few  days  later  a  majestic 
officer  of  the  law  called  in  uniform  to  collect  a 
statutory  fine  amounting  to  a  fraction  of  a  dollar 
I  blessed  the  day  when  Providence  had  steered 
me  through  that  dripping  park. 

On  another  occasion  the  family  occupying  the 
apartment  beneath  mine  in  Munich  were  out- 
raged by  the  news  that  their  maid  could  not  bring 
up  the  customary  wine  for  dinner  because  a  cat 
of  loose  habits  had  given  birth  to  many  kittens 
in  this  particular  wine  cellar  and  resented  the 
approach  of  a  potential  enemy.  The  master 
attempted  to  enter,  but  Puss  drove  him  away  and 
he  threatened  to  shoot  her;  but  here  the  landlord 
interfered  and  warned  his  thirsty  tenant  that 
animals  in  Munich  could  be  slaughtered  only  at 
the  official  abattoir.  A  policeman  was  called,  who, 
after  thumbing  his  official  book  of  paragraphs, 
found  nothing  covering  this  particular  cat,  al- 
though he  confirmed  the  landlord  in  a  disposition 
to  exercise  great  caution  in  so  important  a  matter, 
and  recommended  patience — he  would  consult 
his  superiors  in  the  police  bureau.  Fortunately 
a  force  superior  to  the  police  came  tramping  by — 
I 


98  Prussian  Memories 

nothing  less  than  a  file  of  soldiers  on  fatigue  duty, 
whose  good-natured  sergeant  came  to  the  rescue 
of  tenant,  landlord,  and  policeman  as  well  by  a 
gentle  but  concerted  flank  movement  which 
cleared  the  bin  of  cat  and  kits,  shed  no  blood, 
released  the  wine,  and  maintained  the  law  para- 
graphs intact. 

But  I  must  return  to  the  Emperor. 


CHAPTER  XI 

Prussian    General    Staff — Real    Titles — Spies — Wal- 
dersee — Russia — Absolute  Monarchy 

A  S  Frederick  the  Great  owed  his  fame  largely 
•**  to  the  efficient  military  machine  bequeathed 
to  him  by  his  most  Prussian  of  fathers,  so  Auster- 
litz  and  Jena  were  owing  not  less  to  tne  genius  of 
Napoleon  than  to  the  organization  inaugurated  by 
the  Directoire.  William  II.,  in  June  of  1888, 
found  himself,  when  barely  thirty  years  of  age, 
commanding  the  most  perfect  army  in  the  world 
and  at  the  same  time  the  ruler  of  a  mighty  empire 
in  which  every  conceivable  department  of  human 
activity  was  in  a  very  practical  if  not  always  ap- 
parent manner  subordinated  to  the  great  business 
of  war.  We  of  America  are  so  used  to  the  slack- 
ness not  to  say  dishonesty  of  our  political  repre- 
sentatives that,  when  we  use  military  terms  such  as 
"general  staff,"  "manoeuvres,"  "marches,"  "en- 
campments," or  "citizen  soldiers,"  we  are  as  far 
from  the  real  meaning  as  a  theatre  of  marionettes 

99 


ioo  Prussian  Memories 

from  the  life  they  portray  ./Tin  a  country  where 
bootblacks,  barbers,  and  banjoists  call  themselves 
"Professor,"  and  where- colonels  are  as  common  as 
"Honourables,"  it  is  hard  to  explain  that  titles 
which  we  treat  with  a  smile  are  in  Germany  of  im- 
mense importance  because  they  are  real.  The  colo- 
nel of  Germany  commands  a  regiment  of  from  three 
to  four  thousand  men,  and  every  man  under  him 
has  been  trained  in  the  duties  of  a  soldier  from  the 
handling  of  his  rifle  to  the  care  of  his  marching- 
shoes.  And  moreover,  every  one  of  those  military 
millions  has  had  exactly  the  same  standards  applied 
to  him,  whether  on  the  Russian  border  or  the  Dan- 
ish, on  the  Rhine  or  on  the  Danube.  When  an  Ameri- 
can officer  says  he  has  a  staff  appointment,  we  are 
apt  to  congratulate  him  on  having  enjoyed  politi- 
cal favour  and  that  his  work  therefore  promises 
to  be  more  agreeable  than  real  soldiering.  But 
the  Prussian  has  no  such  idea.  The  best  of  their 
officers  work  hard  in  the  hope  of  becoming  mem- 
bers of  the  great  General  Staff,  that  pet  organiza- 
tion of  Moltke,  and  once  there  they  work  still 
harder  to  meet  the  exacting  requirements  of  that 
station.  Nor  do  these  officers  become  merely 
men  of  the  bureau  as  so  often  with  us;  they  are 
sent  at  short  intervals  back  to  their  active  regi- 
mental duties,  and  thus  is  maintained  a  constant 


IOI 


current  of  understanding  between  the  men  who 
plan  campaigns  and  those  who  do  the  rougher 
work  of  hacking  their  way  into  the  enemy.  Here 
is  Germany's  University,  if  by  that  word  we  mean 
a  gathering  of  the  ablest  students  on  every  subject 
affecting  the  material  existence  of  the  empire. 
Here  is  a  faculty  for  English,  Russian,  French, 
for  every  country  with  which  Germany  may  come 
to  be  at  war,  and  here  are  framed  the  plans  for 
hypothetical  invasions;  and,  dear  fellow-country- 
men, if  you  are  so  simple  as  to  imagine  that  the 
Land  of  the  Dollar  is  not  included  on  this  list, 
your  awakening  may  prove  a  rude  one.  Every 
language  may  be  heard  in  this  University,  and 
there  is  not  a  canal,  road,  bridge,  building,  or 
harbour  of  military  importance  that  is  not  here 
mapped  out  in  detail,  whether  on  the  Thames  or 
the  Seine,  the  Ganges  or  the  Hudson.  The  pro- 
fessors in  this  University  study  carefully  the  daily 
papers  of  a  dozen  tongues  and  chart  from  day  to 
day  every  change  that  has  military  significance. 
Spies  there  must  be,  and  dangerous  work  it  is, 
but  in  countries  like  the  United  States  and  Eng- 
land the  casual  tourist  and  the  trained  student  of 
printed  matter  can  gather  nearly  every  item 
needful  to  an  intelligent  enemy.  In  Russia  and 
France  where  war  is  better  understood,  military 


102  Prussian  Memories 

secrets  are  more  jealously  guarded  and  Germany 
has  to  select  her  explorers  in  this  field  with  con- 
siderable care.  Yet  there  were  in  my  time  forty- 
nine  employees  of  the  French  War  Department 
in  Prussian  pay;  and  in  the  Russian,  perhaps  more. 

In  my  second  visit  to  Poland,  in  1892,  I  secured, 
by  a  chain  of  happy  coincidences,  the  plans  of  a 
Russian  fort  about  which  the  Prussian  General 
Staff  had  been  kept  in  doubt.  Part  of  these 
works  happened  to  be  on  the  estate  of  a  large 
landed  proprietor  whom  I  had  met  at  the  Berlin 
Court  and  who  prayed  for  the  day  when  Germany 
should  invade  Russia,  put  a  stop  to  the  Russifica- 
tion  of  Poland,  and  make  Warsaw  once  more  the 
capital  of  a  great  nation  under  Hohenzollern 
suzerainty.  This  programme  appealed  strongly 
to  me  and  to  all  those  who  recall  the  offensive 
attitude  of  Russia  in  those  days  against  the  Ger- 
mans of  the  Baltic  provinces.  Her  military  move- 
ments on  the  frontiers  of  British  India  and  China 
were  on  such  a  scale  as  to  draw  the  German  General 
Staff  into  friendly  relations  with  the  Intelligence 
Department  of  the  British  army. 

The  information  I  had  brought  from  Poland 
was  imparted  to  William  II.  in  conversation  at  a 
Court  ball,  and  he  was  keenly  alive  to  its  value, 
if  confirmed.  Count  Waldersee,  who  later  figured 


A  Report  to  Count  Waldersee     103 

as  Field-Marshal  of  the  Pekin  Expedition,  stood 
at  the  other  end  of  the  great  room,  surrounded  as 
was  his  wont  by  a  circle  of  officers  paying  court  to 
him.  "You  must  make  your  report  to  Count 
Waldersee,"  said  the  Emperor.  "No,"  answered 
I,  "Count  Waldersee  has  nothing  in  common  with 
me ;  my  relations  here  are  personal  with  you  alone." 
The  Emperor  saw  my  point,  and  instead  of  my 
soliciting  an  audience  of  this  Junker  par  excellence 
it  was  he  who  left  his  admiring  circle  and  hurried 
across  the  floor  to  receive  at  my  hands  information 
which  concerned  his  department  and  suggestions 
regarding  exploitation  of  the  same.  William  II. 
was  full  of  mischief  without  malice  and  relished 
a  temporary  check  to  Waldersee's  soaring  vanity. 
As  a  result  of  these  few  words,  the  General  Staff 
sent  an  admirable  officer  in  disguise  to  inspect  these 
works;  and  on  my  hint  the  British  Government 
did  the  same;  and  as  they  made  their  inspections 
at  different  times,  neither  having  knowledge  of  the 
other's  work,  I  took  a  certain  satisfaction  in  learn- 
ing later  that  each  report  agreed  with  my  original 
statement.  It  is  pleasant  now  to  think  of  a  time 
so  very  recent  when  British  and  Prussian  officers 
worked  together,  but  that  was  before  the  day  of 
asphyxiating  gas,  submarine  hellishness,  and  the 
desecration  of  cathedrals. 


104  Prussian  Memories 

The  Houses  of  Hohenzollern  and  Romanoff  en- 
joyed a  traditional  friendship  wholly  personal; 
for  the  Russian  people  in  general  dislike  the  Prus- 
sians no  less  cordially  than  they,  in  their  turn,  are 
despised  by  them.  But  the  Courts  of  Potsdam 
and  Krasnoe  Selo  were  so  intimate  that  each  sover- 
eign had  by  mutual  request  a  confidential  officer 
permanently  acting  as  bodyguard  and  aide-de- 
camp to  the  other.  It  was  obviously  a  somewhat 
Oriental  pledge  that  neither  would  do  any  act  or 
confer  with  any  person  without  the  consent  or  at 
least  the  knowledge  of  this  alter  ego.  But  in  1891 
the  rudeness  of  the  Russian  Czar  in  crossing 
Prussian  territory  in  his  visits  and  not  even  leaving 
a  card  on  his  cousin  of  Hohenzollern;  and  notably 
the  rapprochement  with  France — these,  together 
with  the  persistent  massing  of  Russian  units  on 
the  Prussian  frontier  and  the  steady  suppression 
of  the  German  language  in  the  Baltic  provinces, 
caused  the  Emperor  to  comment  on  these  offensive 
moves  in  a  spirit  rather  of  cousinly  sorrow  than 
warlike  anger.  It  was  perhaps  the  only  time  that 
I  ever  urged  upon  him  a  policy  or  said  anything 
which  his  prime  minister  could  have  resented 
with  propriety.  But  in  this  matter  I  felt  deeply 
that  a  restored  and  united  Poland  would  add  to 
the  stability  of  Europe,  and  that  the  defeat  of  the 


Russia  and  Germany  105 

Czar's  army  would  be  followed  by  internal  reforms 
good  for  Russia.  I  believed  that  such  reforms 
would  put  an  end  to  the  propaganda  of  anarchists 
and  bomb-throwers,  and  that  these  would  be 
replaced  by  the  legitimate  agitation  of  responsible 
Parliamentarians.  Events  have  justified  the  feel- 
ings I  then  expressed,  for  Russia  was  then  weak  and 
despotic,  while  Germany  was  strong  and  backed 
by  the  public  sentiment  not  merely  of  Poland 
but  of  all  the  world  with  the  possible  exception  of 
France.  The  war  with  Japan  in  1904  did  for 
Russia  then  what  William  II.  should  have  done  a 
dozen  years  before,  and  the  first  faint  foundations 
of  constitutional  government  came  to  the  moujik 
not  from  the  land  of  Kant  and  Schopenhauer  but 
from  the  pagan  shrines  of  Shinto  and  Buddha. 
The  motives  of  William  II.  in  forbidding  war  in 
1891  and  forcing  it  upon  a  reluctant  world  in  1914, 
must  be  sought  in  a  superstitious  regard  for  the 
last  words  of  his  venerable  grandfather,  who  bound 
him  over  to  keep  the  peace  with  Russia  forever 
and  at  any  cost.  Each  of  these  sovereigns  regarded 
Germany's  greatest  danger  as  coming  not  from 
the  Rhine,  much  less  from  the  Vistula,  but  rather 
from  the  mysterious  and  most  disconcerting  de- 
velopment of  a  popular  agitation  which,  for  want 
of  a  better  name,  is  labelled  Socialism.  William  II. 


io6  Prussian  Memories 

listened  long  and  intently  as  I  developed  the  many 
reasons  for  his  stepping  forth,  in  1891,  as  the 
champion  of  Western  civilization  against  the 
barbaric  tendencies  of  Russia,  and  in  the  climax 
of  his  reasons  why  he  should  continue  to  maintain 
the  peace  he  laid  emphasis  on  the  fact  that  of  all 
the  great  nations  Russia  and  Prussia  alone  stood 
for  personal  and  absolute  monarchy.  Since  then 
the  diplomatic  cards  have  been  extensively  shuffled 
on  the  gambling  table  of  the  world's  politics  and 
I  can  no  longer  speak  from  personal  contact; but 
this  much  has  happened  which  the  Emperor  per- 
haps did  not  foresee  when  he  proclaimed  his  resolu- 
tion to  have  but  one  friend  and  that  a  Romanoff. 
Russia  became  not  only  the  firm  ally  of  a  French 
democracy,  but  steadily  improved  her  military 
resources  perhaps  never  more  efficiently  than  as  a 
result  of  the  Port  Arthur  and  Mukden  defeats. 
France,  so  far  from  justifying  the  orthodox  German 
opinion  regarding  Latin  decadence,  revived  the 
best  traditions  of  Napoleonic  organization  in  time 
of  peace  and  at  the  same  time  passed  through  a 
spiritual  and  intellectual  revolution  that  can  be 
appreciated  only  by  one  who  knows  Austria  and 
Spain  or  the  power  of  the  priesthood  over  educa- 
tional institutions  and  the  ballot-box  in  the  France 
of  my  boyhood.  The  Europe  which  in  1871 


The  Arming  of  Germany         107 

applauded  a  Germany  battling  for  her  national 
unity  first  wondered  and  then  became  alarmed  as 
it  observed  a  popular  army  little  by  little  take  on 
the  form  and  manner  of  an  aggressive  weapon  far 
greater  than  could  be  justified  on  the  mere  ground 
of  defending  one's  hearth  and  home.  Each  year 
the  Emperor  insisted  upon  heavier  contributions 
for  guns,  fortresses,  and  new  battalions,  and  France, 
smaller  in  population  and  territory,  saw  a  daily 
increasing  menace — particularly  when  Germans 
in  high  position  proclaimed  with  plausible  assur- 
ance that  another  French  war  would  reduce  France 
to  the  status  of  a  German  province.  The  almost 
hysterical  enthusiasm  with  which  Paris  welcomes 
a  Russian  Czar  can  be  understood  only  by  one  who 
would  have  shared  the  sense  of  humiliation  carefully 
concealed  by  Frenchmen  when  submitting  to  re- 
peated reminders  that  they  must  do  this  or  that  un- 
der penalty  of  another  punishment .  With  the  warm 
support  of  England,  Germany  in  1891  stood  per- 
haps at  her  highest  relative  moment  of  political  im- 
portance in  the  eyes  of  a  respectful  world.  It 
might  be  compared  to  the  apogee  of  Napoleon  the 
Great  in  1811,  or  of  Napoleon  his  nephew  after  Sol- 
ferino,  and  before  the  world  knew  how  dearly  those 
victories  had  been  purchased.  But  first  let  me  give 
you  an  idea  of  what  the  German  military  machine  is. 


CHAPTER  XII 

Manoeuvres — Mobilization — Wagner — Lord    Roberts 
— Franz  Josef 

HPHE  word  "manoeuvres"  means  to  a  Prussian 
•*•  not  merely  dressing  men  in  military  uniform 
and  giving  them  a  week  of  genteel  outdoor  life 
with  tents,  dress  parade,  and  a  careful  cuisine — 
far  from  it.  This  little  word  means,  to  a  large 
fraction  of  the  whole  male  population,  the  rehearsal 
of  real  war.  The  cartridges  are  without  bullets, 
but  horses  are  killed  and  men  are  maimed  and 
millions  of  dollars  are  each  year  destroyed  by  the 
chasing  of  cavalry,  artillery,  and  ammunition- 
trains  over  the  beautifully  cultivated  farm-lands. 
The  Emperor  invited  me  to  be  his  guest  at  the 
first  of  his  grand  manoeuvres  (1888),  and  from 
then  on  to  1896  I  was  present  under  most  favour- 
able conditions  at  the  exercises  of  every  army 
corps  from  the  Dutch  frontier  to  the  Russian,  and 
from  the  Danube  to  the  Kiel  Canal.  Had  I  not 
witnessed  the  monotonous  yet  marvellous  per- 

108 


Manoeuvres  109 

fection  characteristic  of  each  military  fragment, 
however  much  separated  geographically,  I  could 
not  have  believed  that  a  machine  made  up  of 
humans  could  be  taken  apart  and  then  brought 
together  again  by  Imperial  command  and  operated 
with  the  smoothness  of  a  great  mail  steamer  or  an 
express  passenger  train.  Those  who  have  watched 
the  team-play  of  professionals  in  base-  or  foot-ball, 
or  who  have  applauded  the  mimic  regiment  on  a 
music-hall  stage,  can  form  some  notion  of  what  it 
means  to  rehearse  actors  by  the  million  over 
accentuated  country  where  the  map  is  their  only 
guide  and  where  every  step  subjects  one  or  the 
other  to  surprise  by  a  simulated  enemy. 

For  instance,  the  order  to  mobilize  is  issued  and 
reaches  a  peasant  through  the  post  or  by  messenger 
whilst  he  is  at  the  plough.  He  knows  beforehand 
where  to  join  his  comrades  at  the  sound  of  alarm 
and  together  they  make  their  way  to  the  nearest 
company  depot.  Here  they  are  provided  with 
their  kit  which  is  all  ready  for  them,  and  supposing 
these  men  to  be  reserves  who  have  done  their 
active  years  and  are  now  only  called  upon  for 
occasional  autumn  training,  they  at  once  fall  in 
with  their  comrades  of  the  station  and  under  com- 
mand of  their  captain  tramp  away  until  they  meet 
a  second  and  third  company ;  and  finally  the  whole 


no  Prussian  Memories 

legiment  comes  together  and  the  colonel  looks  it 
over — and  woe  to  the  captain  whose  company  is 
not  according  to  standard!  Still  more  woe,  per- 
haps, to  corporals  and  sergeants  whose  rank  hangs 
in  the  balance  at  the  smile  or  frown  of  a  lieutenant. 
In  Prussia,  not  merely  is  the  officer's  career  one 
for  life,  prized  by  all  for  the  social  privileges  it 
confers,  but  the  non-com,  positions  are  also  of  a 
permanent  nature,  and  when  they  retire  after 
honourable  active  military  years  the  State  pro- 
vides them  with  easier  billets  in  the  railway,  tele- 
graph, express,  post-office,  canal,  or  tax-gathering 
service  where  fidelity  is  of  more  importance  than 
soldier  strength.  To  ensure  uniformity  in  drill 
and  barrack-room  habits,  non-coms,  are  periodi- 
cally brought  together  and  re-drilled  at  what 
might  be  called  military  normal  schools  in  order 
to  carry  back  to  the  companies  the  most  recent 
improvements  affecting  their  immediate  depart- 
ments. Roughly  we  may  compare  these  non-com, 
sessions  to  medical  congresses  where  practitioners 
from  different  schools  compare  notes  on  the 
latest  fashions  in  surgery  and  serums.  In  the 
British  army,  and  still  more  so  in  our  regular 
service,  regiments  used  to  differ  on  the  drill-ground 
no  less  than  in  their  mess  traditions,  and  indeed 
esprit  de  corps  while  a  splendid  thing  in  general 


A  New  Army  in 

frequently  reminded  one  of  college  rivalry  rather 
than  the  mechanical  parts  of  an  impersonal  whole. 
The  German  army  is  a  very  young  thing,  scarcely 
older  than  my  grandfather,  for  with  the  battle  of 
Jena  disappeared  not  only  the  machinery  but 
practically  the  whole  personnel  of  the  Prussian 
priesthood  whose  glory  it  had  been  to  hand  from 
generation  to  generation  the  sacred  military  flame 
lighted  by  the  first  Hohenzollern  conqueror  of 
the  Brandenburg  marches.  For  seven  years  after 
Jena  the  King  of  Prussia  remained  content  as  a 
vassal  of  France,  and  his  army,  as  prescribed  by 
Napoleon,  was  cut  down  to  something  more  than 
what  is  now  a  full  corps — merely  the  plaything  of 
a  monarch  who  liked  to  see  soldiers  about  him 
because  they  did  as  they  were  told  and  never 
asked  him  for  a  constitution.  As  Prussia  is  the 
parvenu  amongst  nations  socially  and  politically, 
so  for  her  soldier  traditions  she  has  to  invent  them 
or  borrow  them  after  the  fashion  of  her  wonderful 
but  wearisome  Wagner,  who  seized  upon  the 
legendary  lore  common  to  all  Europe  and  by 
stamping  it  "made  in  Germany"  stirred  national 
enthusiasm  and  made  every  Prussian  throw  out  his 
chest  after  the  manner  of  another  Attila,  Lohen- 
grin, or  Siegfried. 

The    commonness    with    which    my    Prussian 


ii2  Prussian  Memories 

officer  friends  have  contemptuously  referred  to 
soldiers  of  other  armies  as  lacking  the  sense  of 
honour  because  devoid  of  military  traditions,  is 
my  excuse  for  this  historical  digression  which  may 
encourage  them  to  discover  for  themselves  that 
many  an  English  regiment  carried  flags  through 
dozens  of  battles  long  before  Jena,  and  even  before 
Brandenburg  had  dreamed  that  it  could  afford  a 
royal  crown  for  its  ruler. 

But  to  return  to  the  manoeuvre  field.  Our 
company  from  Westphalia  or  the  Rhine  may  have 
had  to  march  one,  two,  or  three  hundred  miles 
before  seeing  the  Emperor,  who  usually  took  com- 
mand of  an  army  composed  of  several  army  corps 
during  the  last  few  days  of  operations  covering 
several  weeks.  The  soldier  is  thoroughly  tested 
in  the  important  details  of  making  and  breaking 
camp,  sentry  and  out-post  duty,  and  above  all, 
the  care  of  his  person.  There  is  no  excuse  for  the 
man  who  falls  out  from  sore  feet,  and  a  Prussian 
marching  column  is  singularly  free  from  the  strag- 
glers which  are  a  feature  of  our  so-called  "militia 
manoeuvres."  During  the  weeks  that  pass  be- 
tween the  first  move  from  its  village  and  the  sight 
of  its  Emperor,  the  company  has  become  part  of 
a  regiment,  the  regiment  has  joined  its  brother 
regiment  and  met  its  general  of  brigade,  and  so  on 


Official  Politeness  113 

up  until  it  is  part  of  the  great  corps  which  occu- 
pies thirty  miles  of  road  when  strung  out  four 
abreast  with  all  its  baggage  and  ammunition- 
train.  The  recruit  learns  more  in  a  few  weeks  of 
this  real  soldier-life  than  in  years  of  barrack  and 
armory  work  such  as  we  too  often  mistake  for 
soldiering.  The  men  sleep  out  in  the  open  if  they 
must,  but  whenever  possible  they  are  quartered 
upon  the  inhabitants.  Here  they  are  for  the  most 
part  welcome  guests,  for  the  ample  reason  that  not 
only  would  protest  not  avail,  but  every  German 
house  sheltering  troops  in  manoeuvre  can  be 
reasonably  sure  that  some  of  its  members  are 
being  elsewhere  cared  for  after  the  same  fashion. 
Universal  service,  which  commenced  only  under 
the  pressure  of  Napoleon  I.,  is  now  not  only  popular 
in  Germany  but  regarded  as  a  matter  of  course, 
along  with  schools  and  other  time-honoured 
expenditures  for  the  public  good. 

Whenever  officers  have  known  why  I  was  present 
at  these  different  manoeuvres,  their  behaviour  has 
always  been  assiduously  polite  and  their  conver- 
sation interesting,  for  a  service  that  draws  to 
itself  the  best  blood  of  a  country  must  necessarily 
include  a  large  share  of  that  country's  capacity 
to  entertain.  But  on  one  or  two  occasions  when 
happening  in  a  part  of  the  country  separated  from 


H4  Prussian  Memories 

my  colleagues,  I  have  been  shouted,  screamed,  and 
bellowed  at  by  most  noble  captains  and  colonels, 
who  paid  me  the  compliment  of  regarding  me  as  a 
fellow-Prussian,  and  to  whom  it  did  not  occur  that 
any  civilian  could  have  any  authority  for  riding 
his  horse  (or  rather  the  Emperor's  horse)  over  a 
field  of  mimic  war.  But  when  the  storm  of  scold- 
ing had  passed  away,  and  the  said  officers  had 
exercised  a  little  of  the  Sherlock  Holmes  in  a  closer 
study  of  my  cavalry  equipment,  they  apologized 
and  flattered  me  to  an  extent  quite  as  great  as 
that  to  which  they  went  originally  in  cursing  and 
bellowing.  Indeed  their  scolding  displeased  me 
less  than  their  civility. 

The  officer  who  was  sent  into  Russia  to  verify 
the  data  I  had  hinted  at  regarding  defensive  works 
in  Poland,  was  a  man  in  whom  was  no  fear  but 
plenty  of  guile.  He  told  me  afterwards,  that  in 
order  to  see  what  he  wanted  he  disguised  himself 
as  a  lumber-dealer  and  left  the  train  at  an  unim- 
portant station  whence  he  expected  to  work  his 
way  through  the  forests  to  the  neighbourhood  of 
the  new  works.  Of  course  he  carefully  carried 
about  his  person  only  such  innocent  papers  as 
the  Russian  police  might  regard  as  confirmatory 
of  his  assumed  r61e  and  trusted  to  a  good  memory 
for  measuring  off  distances  by  counting  telegraph 


A  Spy's  Adventure  115 

poles  by  the  roadside  and  other  signs  without  which 
no  spy  is  worth  more  than  the  common  tourist. 
A  few  data  however  he  had  entrusted  in  faint 
pencil  to  a  little  booklet  of  cigarette  papers,  and 
when  he  found  that  two  Russian  gendarmes  left 
the  train  with  him  and  told  him  he  was  their 
prisoner  he  was  greatly  concerned  regarding  a 
prospective  search.  But  the  way  was  long,  and 
cigarettes  are  matters  of  course,  so  my  Prussian 
friend  carelessly  tore  off  the  first  leaf  of  incriminat- 
ing manuscript  and  rolled  it  full  of  good  tobacco 
which  one  of  the  gendarmes  gratefully  reduced  to 
ashes.  Two  other  pages  were  soon  disposed  of  in 
the  same  manner,  and  by  the  time  these  guardians 
of  Russian  military  secrets  had  handed  over  their 
prisoner  to  the  commandant  of  the  fortress  they 
had  smoked  up  not  merely  most  of  my  friend's 
tobacco,  but  every  evidence  on  which  he  should 
have  been  punished  as  a  spy.  The  gentle  gen- 
darmes had  moreover  brought  him  into  the  very 
fort  about  which  he  had  been  in  doubt  and  in  the 
search  after  which  he  was  prepared  to  spend  weeks 
of  laborious  intrigue.  It  was  with  great  glee  that 
my  friend  told  me  of  this  adventure,  for  happy 
accidents  of  this  nature  do  not  often  happen  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  in  Russia  the  good-nature 
and  mental  density  of  the  lower  classes  frequently 


n6  Prussian  Memories 

counteract  the  best-laid  plans  of  a  crafty  secret 
police.  An  officer  high  in  the  Russian  Depart- 
ment of  the  Prussian  General  Staff  gave  me  one 
day  150  letters  which  I  was  to  post  in  New  York, 
all  addressed  to  supposedly  bona-fide  commission 
merchants  along  the  western  frontiers  of  Russia. 
These  letters  dealt  nominally  with  strictly  legiti- 
mate business  offers  from  bona-fide  American  houses 
that  had  an  interest  in  getting  first-hand  informa- 
tion regarding  the  movement  of  certain  merchan- 
dise from  the  interior  of  Russia  into  Europe.  This 
work  was  purely  statistical  and  of  legitimate 
interest  to  many  manufacturers  or  merchants 
desiring  to  do  business  between  America  and  the 
Baltic  ports  of  Russia.  Should  any  one  of  these 
epistolary  agents  be  arrested  and  searched,  his 
correspondence  need  not  reveal  anything  which 
a  public  prosecutor  could  find  useful,  yet  by  means 
of  an  extensive  network  of  shrewd  agents  sending 
from  day  to  day  the  character  and  quantity  of 
every  carload  passing  certain  points,  the  German 
General  Staff  could  readily  combine  these  scat- 
tered facts  so  as  to  know  at  the  earliest  possible 
moment  of  any  movement  suggestive  of  mobiliza- 
tion or  of  any  military  enterprise  requiring  more 
than  usual  amounts  of  a  certain  type  of  goods.  It 
makes  a  soldier  smile  to  read  periodic  revelations 


Military  News  117 

by  alleged  ex-spies  who  perform  feats  recalling 
Benvenuto  Cellini  or  Jack  Sheppard.  In  these 
days  of  international  banking,  telegraphs,  and 
Orient  expresses,  the  spy  business  is  a  matter  of 
widely  ramified  organization  rather  than  of  pick- 
ing locks  or  waylaying  kings'  messengers.  A 
government  whose  general  staff  is  so  equipped  that 
it  can  record  the  faintest  fluctuation  in  the  cotton, 
copper,  steel,  or  wool  market;  and  registers  the 
movement  of  every  extra  load  of  oats,  hay,  or  straw 
especially  when  moving  towards  a  cavalry  post — 
such  a  government  does  not  wait  until  war  is 
declared  before  collecting  maps  and  selecting  the 
siege-guns  necessary  for  battering  down  the  cities 
in  its  way. 

In  the  Spanish  War  our  army  reached  Cuba  be- 
fore anyone  in  Washington  dreamed  that  lighters 
were  necessary  for  the  debarkation  of  troops  or  that 
a  transport  service  was  part  of  a  military  expe- 
dition. The  Boer  War  was  merrily  in  swing  before 
England  learned  that  the  Boers  had  horses — to  say 
nothing  of  guns — superior  to  their  own.  Our  people 
are  apt  to  think  that  after  a  generation  of  fighting 
we  are  entitled  to  rest  and  enjoy  the  fruits  of 
conquest.  Not  so  the  Prussian,  who  devotes 
every  day  of  nominal  peace  to  anticipating  the 
great  day  when  he  may  prove  his  power  to  dictate 


n8  Prussian  Memories 

such  terms  as  will  make  his  Emperor  the  only  one 
in  Europe. 

And  that  is  why  these  manoeuvres  are  matters 
of  importance  to  all  concerned,  because  in  the 
handling  of  large  bodies,  officers  have  infinite 
opportunity  of  gaining  experience;  and  the  Em- 
peror is  able  every  year  to  quietly  drop  or  pass  over 
men  who  under  our  system  of  seniority  and  even 
in  England  may  reach  the  highest  commands  and 
yet  be  unfit  to  lead  a  regiment.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  Germany  could  not  have  produced  so  in- 
competent a  general  as  Buller  in  the  Boer  War 
or  as  Shafter  in  ours  with  Spain.  And  everyone 
knows  that  pluck  and  dash  amongst  the  younger 
officers  may  be  wasted  if  the  higher  places  are 
blocked  by  senile  politicians  or  friends  of  those  in 
power. 

Anyone  may  look  at  the  German  manoeuvres 
from  some  point  or  other,  but  only  the  few  can  see 
important  things.  The  late  Lord  Roberts  was  a 
guest  on  one  of  these  occasions,  but  when  I  asked 
him  if  he  was  pleased  with  what  he  saw,  he  could 
only  praise  the  unerring  talent  of  the  Prussian 
officer  detailed  as  his  aide-de-camp,  who  never  by 
any  accident  led  him  anywhere  excepting  where 
there  was  nothing  of  interest  to  a  soldier.  He  had 
been  provided  with  an  alleged  companion,  guide, 


Franz  Josef  119 

and  interpreter  whose  English  was  wholly  inade- 
quate, but  whose  German  instructions  were  no 
doubt  to  show  Lord  Roberts  nothing  that  might 
one  day  be  of  service  to  him.  In  my  own  case, 
I  could  afford  to  ignore  this  feature  of  German 
statecraft  as  I  had  no  immediate  prospect  of  being 
called  to  command  the  U.  S.  Army  in  the  field, 
and  I  found,  moreover,  that  I  never  missed  a  trick 
in  the  German  field  of  war  if  I  kept  my  eye  on  the 
little  Japanese  attache,  Fukushima,  who  divined 
the  changes  on  the  military  map  with  the  eye  of 
a  magician. 

Lord  Roberts  spoke  neither  German  nor  French ; 
and  when  the  Turkish  military  attache  was  pre- 
sented to  him  we  watched  with  much  interest  how 
they  would  fare  conversationally.  It  was  halting 
work  at  first,  but  soon  both  faces  beamed;  they 
were  talking  volubly  in  Persian — one  of  the  many 
"east  of  Suez"  languages  familiar  to  this  great 
and  simple  soldier. 

The  Austrian  Emperor  is  also  master  of  many 
— some  say  fifteen — languages ;  yet  I  was  surprised 
when  William  II.  took  me  over  to  present  me  to 
Franz  Josef  he  first  asked  me  if  I  could  speak 
German.  I  said,  "A  little!"  "Good,"  said  he, 
"for  the  Austrian  Emperor  knows  no  English!" 
Old  Emperor  William  I.  also  knew  no  English, 


i2o  Prussian  Memories 

an  interesting  fact  that  was  borne  in  upon  the  late 
Senator  Sergeant  who  was  sent  as  United  States 
Minister  to  Berlin  although  innocent  of  either 
French  or  German;  and  he  tried  to  talk  Ohio 
politics  to  William  I.  Needless  to  say  he  was 
never  given  a  second  opportunity. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Naval  Activity — Admiral  Hornby — "Fighting  Bob" 
— Colonial  Activity — Singapore 

DISMARCK  and  William  II.  are  alike  fa  that 
*~*  each  has  said  plain  things  in  so  dramatic  or 
violent  a  manner  that  the  public  could  not  believe 
them  in  earnest.  When  therefore  the  Emperor 
inaugurated  his  remarkable  reign  by  declaring  that 
the  future  of  Germany  lay  upon  the  water,  the 
steamship  companies  of  Bremen  and  Hamburg 
shrugged  their '  shoulders  and  inland  Germany 
smiled  at  the  enthusiasm  of  a  youthful  yachtsman. 
The  Bavarians  in  particular  made  merry  over  the 
Prussian  navy  but  the  government  soon  won  them 
over  by  purchasing  in  Rome  the  clerical  votes 
needed  in  the  Parliament  at  Berlin.  No  sooner 
had  William  II.  ascended  the  throne  than  he 
prepared  combined  naval  and  military  manoeuvres 
on  a  scale  hitherto  undreamed  of  in  Germany, 
and  to  these  he  invited  exalted  naval  commanders 
from  foreign  countries ;  but  instead  of  distributing 

121 


122  Prussian  Memories 

them  on  board  his  warships  he  mounted  them — 
some  of  them  for  the  first  time — on  horses  and  set 
them  scampering  about  the  Baltic  shores  where 
they  saw  nothing  whatever  interesting  to  a  sailor 
and  returned  home  much  as  they  came,  save  for 
the  bruises  incident  to  naval  exercise  in  unwonted 
places.  The  British  Admiral  Hornby  was  a  rare 
exception,  a  spare  athletic  figure  who  showed  that 
he  was  at  home  in  the  hunting  field  no  less  than  on 
the  waves;  but  it  was  a  sorry  picture  to  watch 
the  many  nautical  wobblers  hugging  the  necks 
of  Imperial  horses  and  finally  dropping  off  in  the 
sandy  fields  of  the  Danish  border.  The  lesson  of 
these  manoeuvres  was  brought  home  with  brutal 
distinctness  to  all  but  the  gullible.  Germany  did 
not  mean  that  any  should  share  the  knowledge 
she  had  or  expected  to  acquire  in  her  new-chosen 
field.  Having  had  many  occasions  when  cruising 
in  my  sailing  canoe  to  watch  divisions  of  torpedo 
boats  slipping  in  and  out  between  Kiel,  Warne- 
munde,  and  Swinemunde,  I  had  no  doubt  in  my 
own  mind  that  whatever  the  Emperor  might 
attempt  on  the  high  seas  would  be  carried  out 
with  the  same  thoroughness  that  characterized 
government  work  on  land.  In  those  days  of 
Anglo -German  comradeship  every  facility  was 
afforded  German  officers  to  familiarize  themselves 


American  Secrets  123 

with  every  department  of  British  naval  activity 
— no  one  then  suspecting  against  whom  would  be 
directed  the  weapons  that  were  at  that  time  being 
forged.  William  II.  was  created  Admiral  of  the 
British  Fleet,  and  it  is  but  slight  exaggeration  to 
say  that  he  knew  as  much  of  naval  matters  in 
Southampton  water  as  he  did  of  those  at  Kiel  or 
Wilhelmshafen.  Nor  were  American  naval  officers 
less  anxious  to  further  his  salt-water  ambitions. 

The  United  States  sent  to  the  opening  of  the 
Kiel  Canal  in  1895  a  squadron  thoroughly  up-to- 
date  and  with  several  features  unsuspected  even 
by  German  naval  architects.  The  Emperor  took 
charge  of  this  matter  himself  and  by  a  little  judi- 
cious flattery  not  only  was  he  shown  everything 
he  wished  to  see  in  the  American  squadron,  but 
he  even  secured  from  Admiral  Evans  permission 
for  his  technical  advisers  to  make  a  more  detailed 
examination  and  give  the  benefit  of  this  to  his 
navy.  Had  a  German  ship  in  American  waters 
permitted  an  American  official  to  gather  informa- 
tion in  this  manner  the  captain  of  that  ship  would 
have  been  promptly  punished  as  an  example  to 
others.  In  this  case,  however,  not  only  was  the 
commanding  American  officer  not  censured;  he 
even  wrote  a  book  in  which  this  episode  figured  as 
one  of  his  professional  triumphs.  When  he  and 


124  Prussian  Memories 

his  brother  officers  were  presented  to  the  Emperor 
at  Kiel,  I  was  in  the  group  and  noted  the  successive 
stages  of  the  Imperial  conquest  with  amusement 
mixed  with  amazement — yet  when  I  have  warned 
my  countrymen  in  print  that  the  German  General 
Staff  knows  more  about  American  military  and 
naval  conditions  than  even  the  officers  in  our  own 
service,  my  warnings  have  had  no  more  effect  than 
the  corollary  which  I  now  repeat,  that  a  German 
raid  upon  the  United  States  is  not  outside  the 
range  of  German  war-thought. 

The  naval  activity  of  Germany  since  the  acces- 
sion of  William  II.  has  been  feverish,  and  scarcely 
less  so  the  expansion  of  German  subsidized  mail 
steamers  whose  manifest  purpose  has  been  to  rival 
if  not  ruin  English  companies  in  the  same  trade. 
Not  only  to  North  American  ports,  but  to  Medi- 
terranean as  well  as  to  African,  Australian,  Chinese, 
and  Japanese,  the  German  flag  showed  itself  more 
and  more  aggressive — each  flag  representing  not 
merely  the  thrift  of  German  merchants  but  a 
potential  auxiliary  cruiser  commanded  by  officers 
of  the  German  naval  reserve  and  a  crew  trained 
to  handle  guns  at  the  porthole  no  less  than 
soup-tureens  and  beer-mugs  in  the  steward's  de- 
partment. From  the  club-house  verandah  at  Sin- 
gapore I  one  day  counted  twenty-five  funnels  of 


Germany  in  Borneo  125 

one  German  line,  and  when  I  looked  into  the 
matter  I  found  that  this  great  subsidized  com- 
pany had  successively  bought  up  small  competing 
English  lines  and  was  now  carrying  the  British 
mail  to  British  colonies  and  securing  almost  a 
monopoly  of  the  most  important  knowledge  re- 
garding these  imperfectly  charted  waters,  notably 
between  the  Philippines,  North  Borneo,  and  the 
Malay  Peninsula.J/In  my  three  journeys  to  the 
Far  East  since  the  accession  of  the  present  Em- 
peror, I  have  noted  the  distinct — I  had  almost 
said  the  violent — progress  of  German  prestige 
east  of  Suez  and  west  of  California,  owing  to  the 
energy  with  which  the  Berlin  Government  was 
carrying  out  the  great  oratorical  dictum  that  Ger- 
many's future  lay  upon  the  water.  Where  for- 
merly all  white  people  in  the  Far  East  united  in 
one  social  centre  not  merely  for  sport  but  also 
self-defence  if  need  be,  the  policy  of  1888  showed 
itself  in  clubs  where  only  Germans  came  together 
and  where  the  one  congenial  theme  was  the  pro- 
spective triumph  of  the  German  language  over 
the  English  as  a  medium  of  intercourse  with 
Chinese,  Malay,  and  Hindoo.  Even  on  a  German 
Government  steamer  carrying  the  British  mail 
between  Hong  Kong  and  Bangkok  I  found  two 
tables  in  the  main  saloon,  one  for  Germans  only, 


126  Prussian  Memories 

and  the  other  for  the  cosmopolitan  white,  under 
which  term  I  seek  to  designate  the  sort  of  man 
who  makes  an  agreeable  travelling  or  club  com- 
panion in  every  part  of  the  world.  The  Swede, 
Norwegian,  Dane,  Dutch,  Belgian,  Russian,  Ameri- 
can, Turk — all  these  may  blend  harmoniously  in 
a  Far  Eastern  club,  and  each  contribute  to  relieve 
the  common  tedium  after  office  hours.  But  enter 
a  German,  and  we  know  him  by  a  metaphorical 
chip  upon  his  shoulder  and  a  tacit  assertion  that 
what  other  members  regard  as  social  privileges 
he  intends  to  claim  as  legal  rights.  Perhaps  I 
should  add  that  the  mercantile  Germans,  who 
came  to  the  Far  East  under  the  German  flag,  and 
who  hear  nothing  but  their  own  language  in  the 
chain  of  clubs  that  link  Bombay  to  Yokohama, 
are  inferior  in  social  qualities  to  the  representatives 
of  English  houses  whose  traditions  are  those  of 
merchant  princes  rather  than  retailers  and  pedlars. 
Whatever  the  cause,  the  German  in  his  short  and 
rapid  career  as  a  commercial  rival  in  Far  Eastern 
waters  has  succeeded  in  making  the  name  of  his 
country  a  byword  for  generally  unclubable  quali- 
ties. On  one  of  my  trips  through  Suez  to  Shang- 
hai we  had  sixteen  men  in  the  first  cabin — all 
German  merchants.  They  drank  beer  very  often, 
would  take  no  exercise,  dozed  and  lounged  in  their 


Arrest  near  Strasburg  127 

steamer  chairs  until  symptoms  of  biliousness 
manifested  themselves.  I  had  to  seek  out  some 
Scotchmen  in  the  second  cabin  for  the  physical 
exercises  without  which  ship  life  in  the  tropics 
becomes  a  torment.  The  captain  of  the  Preus- 
sen  was  an  old  friend  and  he  had  a  daily  tale  of 
misery  occasioned  by  the  quarrels  of  his  six- 
teen fellow-countrymen.  They  were  eternally 
complaining  to  him,  and  insulting  one  another, 
to  say  nothing  of  demoralizing  the  perspiring 
stewards;  and  the  captain  cursed  them  and  all 
German  passengers,  declaring  that  a  dozen  of 
such  gave  him  more  annoyance  than  a  crowd- 
ed passenger  list  of  English  or  other  civilized 
people. 

Did  it  not  savour  of  conceit,  I  would  confide  to 
the  reader  that  Germans  have  commonly  regarded 
me  as  a  German  and  that  I  was  once  arrested  and 
had  some  difficulty  in  satisfying  the  military 
authorities  near  Strasburg  that  I  was  not  subject 
to  their  control  in  the  matter  of  serving  in  the 
ranks  and  that  I  was  not  even  born  in  Germany 
or  enjoyed  any  trace  of  German  blood  on  either 
side  but,  on  the  contrary,  was  of  purely  English 
extraction  on  both  sides.  The  German  official 
was  much  annoyed,  not  at  himself,  but  at  me, 
and  scolded  me  soundly  because  I  had  dared 


128  Prussian  Memories 

to  speak  German  without   an   accent   or   as  he 
pronounced  it  an  "ackzong"   (emphasis  on  the 
"ong"). 
But  to  return  to  the  German  navy. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

Jameson — Kruger  Dispatch — Spanish  War — Manila 
— Dewey  —  Diedrichs  —  Chichester —  Kiao-chao 
— Wei-hai-wei — Seymour — Consul  at  Che-foo 

r~PHE  display  of  warships  at  Kiel  at  the  opening 
*•  of  the  Baltic  Canal  in  1895  was  a  stirring 
sight  and  added  to  the  Emperor's  enthusiasm  for 
ships,  but  in  a  few  months  events  in  South  Africa 
stirred  Prussia  profoundly  on  this  subject  and  did 
more  in  a  day  for  his  naval  budget  than  the  eight 
preceding  years  of  oratory  and  personal  effort. 
In  January,  1896,  the  Boer  misgovernment  in 
Johannesburg  bore  so  heavily  upon  the  whites  of 
other  speech  that  they  murmured  much  and  con- 
spired for  Home  Rule  after  the  fashion  of  the 
Americans  in  California  and  Texas  before  the 
annexation  of  those  countries  to  the  United  States. 
President  Kruger  and  his  brother  Boers  were 
mostly  misguided  patriots  somewhat  like  John 
Brown  of  Osawatomie,  whose  head  could  hold 

but  one  idea  at  a  time,  and  in  the  case  of  Kruger 
9  129 


130  Prussian  Memories 

his  idea  of  happiness  was  an  Africa  with  plenty 
of  black  farm-hands  and  not  a  single  Englishman. 
But  gold-mines  will  happen — even  on  the  best 
regulated  of  African  farms — and  as  the  romantic 
but  drowsy  Alcaldes  of  California  were  sacrificed 
to  the  Forty-niners  from  Yankeedom,  so  the  mines 
of  the  Rand  drew  from  the  ends  of  the  earth 
thousands  of  adventurers  who  cared  as  little  for 
Dutch  traditions  on  the  high  veldt  as  had  their 
kinsmen  cared  for  the  laws  of  Castile  and  Aragon 
in  the  Sierras.  And  so  it  came  about  that  a  band 
of  reckless  Englishmen  under  one  Jameson  raided 
the  Transvaal  and  sought  to  upset  a  Boer  despot- 
ism that  weighed  oppressively  upon  all  Uitlanders 
and  particularly  upon  those  fond  of  gold.  Jameson 
was  arrested  and  so  were  many  millionaire  con- 
federates whose  acquaintance  I  had  the  pleasure 
of  making  as  they  whiled  away  the  time  when 
under  sentence  of  death  in  the  Pretoria  jail.  The 
raid  was  a  small  affair — a  dispute  between  cosmo- 
politan miners  and  Boer  farmers,  a  question  of 
internal  British  administration;  and  the  meddling 
of  any  other  power  at  such  a  time  was  an  act  of 
impertinence. 

But  not  for  nothing  had  the  Prussian  bureau- 
cracy reared  a  generation  of  children  in  the  con- 
fident anticipation  of  a  new  world-power  destined 


Jameson  Raid  131 

to  spread  Kultur  and  Black  Eagles  wherever  the 
German  navy  could  penetrate.  The  Jameson 
raid  seemed  sent  by  Heaven  as  a  Hohenzollern 
opportunity  and  it  was  eagerly  seized.  From 
Berlin  flashed  a  cable  to  Paul  Kruger  extending  to 
him  the  hand  of  German  brotherhood  in  whatever 
difference  he  might  have  with  England.  Imperial 
sorrow  was  expressed  at  the  wicked  raid  and  this 
strange  document  was  signed  by  William  alone. 

Now  Germany  is  not  Prussia,  and  while  William 
II.  is  an  absolute  King,  the  moment  he  acts  as 
Emperor  he  is  under  limitations  imposed  by  a 
Constitution;  and  this  Constitution  provides  that 
official  documents  shall  bear  the  countersign  of 
a  responsible  minister.  When  Bismarck  framed 
this  portion  of  the  Imperial  Compact,  he  natu- 
rally thought  it  wise  to  protect  himself  against 
any  outburst  of  Imperial  spontaneity  such  as  this 
extraordinary  cable  to  Oom  Paul.  It  startled 
Europe  and  in  England  raised  an  angry  protest 
whose  echoes  had  not  subsided  when  the  violation 
of  Belgian  neutrality  in  August,  of  1914,  called 
the  British  people  throughout  the  world  to  arms 
against  the  common  enemy.  Prince  Hohenlohe 
was  Prime  Minister  when  the  Kruger  dispatch 
was  sent.  Had  he  known  of  such  a  paper  he 
should  have  insisted  either  upon  countersigning 


132  Prussian  Memories 

it  or  resigning.  This  matter,  so  unimportant  in 
itself,  was  historically  a  new  departure,  for  it 
proclaimed  to  the  world  that  the  German  Empire 
was  seeking  foreign  adventure  as  a  consolation 
for  domestic  difficulties  and  that  her  great  navy 
was  to  be  a  means  of  colonial  expansion  wherever 
and  whenever  opportunity  offered. 

The  simple  Boers  naturally  accepted  the  Kruger 
telegram  as  a  sign  that  henceforth  they  could 
count  upon  William  II.  as  their  ally  in  any  pro- 
spective war;  and  from  this  moment  commenced 
the  arming  and  equipping  of  burghers  under 
German  auspices,  the  results  of  which  astonished 
the  world  on  the  Tugela  and  at  Ladysmith.  But 
while  Imperial  Germany  was  spinning  its  web  of 
world-politics,  many  a  German  merchant  told  me 
in  confidence  that  he  cursed  the  day  when  these 
great  schemes  were  inaugurated,  for  personally 
all  he  asked  was  a  fair  field  and  no  favour.  Since 
the  Jameson  Raid  Germans  have  lost  some  of 
their  former  popularity,  and  business  is  no  excep- 
tion to  the  rule  that  "Kissing  goes  by  favour." 
During  the  six  months  that  I  wandered  about 
South  Africa  meeting  merchants  and  politicians 
I  heard  but  one  voice  amongst  Germans  and  that 
was  a  prayer  for  immunity  from  Imperial  patron- 
age. The  year  1896  may  be  said  to  have  sounded 


Dewey  and  Diedrichs  133 

a  note  of  warning  to  Germany  that  henceforth 
English  and  Americans  would  act  in  common  as 
against  the  new  spirit  in  the  Fatherland — nor 
was  it  long  before  the  Spanish  War  broke  out, 
when  official  Germany  ranged  itself  completely 
against  the  United  States,  and  indeed  the  only 
sympathy  we  found  then  was  in  England. 

Admiral  Dewey  had  a  difficult  task  at  Manila, 
but  the  English  authorities  at  Hong-Kong  not 
only  helped  him  with  coal  and  other  supplies  but 
placed  their  docks  at  his  disposal  and  treated  our 
bluejackets,  who  subsequently  painted  this  colony 
very  red,  with  as  much  tenderness  as  though  wel- 
coming a  large  family  of  prodigal  sons  to  the 
domestic  hearth.  British  tars  crowded  the  rigging 
and  cheered  the  little  Yankee  squadron  as  it 
steamed  forth  to  Manila  whose  waters  were  pre- 
sumably well  sown  with  mines.  Dewey  did  his 
work  according  to  the  best  traditions  of  the  Ameri- 
can navy,  sank  all  there  was  of  the  Spanish  fleet, 
and  then  waited  for  the  American  transports 
before  attempting  operations  on  land.  During 
these  trying  days,  when  he  was  in  constructive 
control  of  the  Philippine  capital,  the  English 
fleet,  whose  interests  in  Eastern  waters  were  para- 
mount, observed  a  benevolent  neutrality,  whereas 
Imperial  Germany,  that  had  there  no  interests 


134  Prussian  Memories 

worth  mentioning,  sent  for  the  embarrassment  of 
Dewey  a  larger  naval  display  than  that  of  any 
other  country,  and  acted  throughout  with  insol- 
ence until  the  American  Admiral  expressed  his 
readiness  to  fight  the  German  Admiral,  after  which 
no  further  trouble  came  from  that  quarter. 

While  I  was  in  Hong-Kong  and  Manila,  it  was 
naturally  of  interest  to  gather  evidence  on  this 
subject,  and  I  did  so  from  eye-witnesses.  Admiral 
Dewey  has  since  embodied  this  episode  in  a  chap- 
ter of  absorbing  interest,  and  the  German  Admiral 
has  been  constrained,  no  doubt  by  official  pressure, 
to  traverse  every  statement  of  the  American 
Admiral  in  so  far  as  it  reflected  upon  the  alleged 
discourtesy  of  the  Kaiser  towards  the  United 
States  at  this  juncture.  But  as  Admiral  Diedrichs' 
official  narrative  is  wholly  at  variance  with  my 
own  version  of  the  matter,  and  as  Admiral  Dewey 
is  not  merely  respected  in  the  service  as  a  naval 
commander  but  also  as  an  expert  in  the  field  of 
international  law,  to  me  at  least  one  page  of 
Dewey  is  better  historic  evidence  than  a  volume 
of  Diedrichs.  This  German  Admiral  carried  his 
tactlessness,  not  to  say  anti-American  activity, 
so  far  as  to  attempt  an  organized  movement 
against  the  American  squadron,  and  for  this  pur- 
pose sounded  his  European  colleagues,  amongst 


Kiao-chao  135 

them  the  late  Admiral  Chichester,  who  squelched 
the  whole  conspiracy  by  answering  the  German  in 
these  classic  words:  "No  one  knows  what  England 
is  likely  to  do  excepting  Admiral  Dewey  and 
myself." 

Whether  this  Prussian  busy-body  ever  com- 
prehended the  full  force  of  Chichester's  snub  is 
questionable,  but  at  any  rate  soon  therafter  he 
withdrew  and  sought  consolation  in  Kiao-chao 
where  he  erected  a  monument  to  himself  after  the 
fashion  of  Spanish  conquistadores.  I  did  not  climb 
to  the  top  of  the  hill  where  this  tribute  to  German 
colonial  enterprise  was  in  process,  but  addressed 
myself  to  a  Prussian  non-com,  who  had  under  him 
a  long  line  of  Chinese  coolies  struggling  upward 
with  loads  on  barrows.  We  passed  the  time  of 
day  and  chatted  of  home  and  the  difficulties  of 
getting  good  beer  in  China.  He  was  a  good- 
natured  fellow  from  South  Germany  and  only 
occasionally  interrupted  our  talk  in  order  to  whack 
with  a  leathern  thong  some  dilatory  coolie  who 
had  been  conscripted  in  the  great  task  of  spreading 
Kultur  in  China.  I  asked  why  this  procession 
of  labour  towards  the  hill  when  the  colony  stood 
in  need  of  streets,  sewers,  docks,  warehouses — 
in  short,  the  important  things  of  life. 

The  patriotic  non-com,   answered  indignantly 


136  Prussian  Memories 

that  these  coolies  of  his  were  engaged  in  the 
most  important  work  of  all — rearing  a  monu- 
ment to  Admiral  Diedrichs,  conqueror  of  Kiao- 
chao. 

y  Alas  for  human  vanity !  This  Diedrichs  monu- 
ment makes  even  a  Chinaman  smile  today,  yet 
in  Imperial  Germany  it  filled  the  breast  of  every 
schoolboy  with  ambition  to  go  out  into  the  world 
and  help  on  the  great  work  of  making  German  the 
official  language  of  China.  This  noble  resolution, 
by  the  way,  did  not  show  practical  results  beyond 
the  Berlin  bureaus  in  which  the  regulations  on  this 
subject  were  conceived.  Even  the  officers  of  the 
garrison  had  to  employ  English-speaking  Chinese 
servants  from  Shanghai,  and  so  far  from  the  natives 
mastering  the  language  of  Goethe,  I  found  my 
German  friends  taking  lessons  in  pidgin  English, 
and  not  from  mere  love  of  Great  Britain.  Oddly 
enough  whilst  hundreds  of  natives  were  being 
officially  diverted  to  erecting  a  vainglorious  monu- 
ment to  Diedrichs,  the  representative  of  the 
Deutsche  Bank  told  me  the  merchants  could  get 
no  labour  for  lightering  ships  in  port,  or  for  neces- 
sary housework,  and  this  in  the  classic  land  of 
congested  population!  But  oh!  how  refreshing 
to  get  out  of  this  sham  colony  of  Prussianized 
Chinamen  and  very  homesick  officials  where  no 


British  Goodwill  137 

sport  enlivened  the  day's  monotony,  and  in  a  few 
hours  steam  into  Wei-hai-wei  where  Admiral 
Seymour  and  the  whole  British  community  down 
to  the  youngest  middy  were  keeping  up  their 
health  and  good  spirits  by  manly  exercises — foot- 
ball, cricket,  tennis,  and  polo  all  going  on  at  once. 
Germany  had  been  more  than  a  year  fretting  and 
fuming  at  Kiao-chao  and  the  British  flag  had 
been  at  Wei-hai-wei  but  six  months,  yet  under  its 
folds  the  Chinese  crowded  in  from  all  directions; 
British  rule  started  quietly,  not  by  doing  violence 
to  native  custom  but  with  the  co-operation  of  the 
village-heads,  so  that  a  stranger  might  have  as- 
sumed that  this  orderly  community  represented 
generations  of  goodwill. 

Not  many  days  later  I  was  with  the  Ameri- 
can Consul  at  Chee-foo  (Fowler  of  Boston) ;  he 
was  troubled  because  the  Boxers  were  already 
making  ominous  noises  about  Pekin  and  an  Ameri- 
can war-vessel  was  on  its  way  and  had  cabled 
ahead  that  he  should  provide  coal  for  her.  There 
was  not  a  bucket  of  coal  to  be  had  in  all  Chee-foo, 
so  he  told  me,  and  begged  me  to  think  of  some  way 
of  helping  him  out  of  a  very  serious  predicament. 
"Have  you  applied  to  the  British  Admiral?" 
said  I.  "Of  course  not,"  said  he.  "Why  should 
I?  The  thing  is  absurd." 


138  Prussian  Memories 

"That  shows  you  don't  know,"  said  I.  "Cable 
him  at  once." 

He  did  so,  and  in  a  few  minutes  came  the  answer 
I  anticipated,  namely,  that  the  United  States 
might  help  herself  to  as  much  British  coal  as  she 
needed.  The  American  Consul,  whose  training 
at  home  had  been  from  text-books  which  teach 
that  the  highest  statesmanship  consists  in  meta- 
phorically "twisting  the  British  Lion's  tail," 
suddenly  woke  up  to  a  great  fact  which  every 
American  traveller  acknowledges  gratefully. 


CHAPTER  XV 

Colonial  Experience  in  German  New  Guinea 

THE  wise  man  does  not  insult  another  unless 
prepared  to  kill  him,  and  we  look  back  with 
amazement  upon  such  acts  as  the  gratuitous  insult 
to  England  in  1896 — I  mean  the  famous  Kruger 
dispatch — and  the  hostile  behaviour  of  Admiral 
Diedrichs  during  our  Spanish  War  of  1898.  These 
were  two  crimes  of  such  monstrous  character  that 
we  may  even  raise  them  to  the  dignity  of  blun- 
ders. They  alarmed  the  thinking  world,  and 
Germany  from  that  time  on  has  kept  the  cabinets 
of  Europe  wondering  as  to  who  might  be  the  next 
victim  of  her  bullying  disposition.  Of  course  in 
the  case  of  the  United  States  Berlin  recognized 
the  mistake  she  had  made  when  Spain  collapsed 
and  public  opinion  expressed  itself  in  language 
strong  enough  to  reach  across  the  Atlantic.  And 
now  Prussian  diplomacy  with  characteristic  awk- 
wardness attempted  to  explain  away  her  behaviour 
at  Manila.  The  Emperor  sent  presents,  a  statue 

139 


140  Prussian  Memories 

of  Frederick  the  Great,  a  collection  of  plaster 
casts  glorifying  Germanic  legendary  heroes;  then 
he  ordered  the  building  of  an  American  yacht,  and 
to  cap  the  climax  of  futile  effort  sent  his  brother 
Henry  to  make  a  tour  of  the  country  and  give 
official  assurance  that  the  only  genuine  friend  of 
the  American  democracy  was  the  divinely  anointed 
King  of  Prussia.  The  mission  was  a  failure,  for 
reasons  I  have  already  pointed  out,  and  yet  such 
is  Prussian  bureaucracy  that  German  papers 
persisted  in  referring  to  American  Deutschtum  as 
a  product  of  careful  Kultur  at  the  hands  of  the 
German  Government. 

My  old  friend,  Doctor  von  Holleben,  when  Ger- 
man Ambassador  in  Washington,  asked  seriously 
for  my  assistance  in  purchasing  the  goodwill  or 
at  least  the  silence  of  the  New  York  Herald  in 
regard  to  his  master,  the  Emperor;  and  he  was 
very  angry  because  I  nearly  laughed  myself  out 
of  my  steamer  chair  so  much  did  I  relish  what  I 
regarded  as  his  solemn  joke.  He  had  orders  on 
this  subject  and  was  perhaps  never  more  aston- 
ished than  when  I  told  him  that  the  private  in- 
come of  Mr.  James  Gordon  Bennett  was  probably 
larger  than  that  of  William  II.  and  that  whatever 
the  Herald  might  say  today  in  regard  to  the  Prus- 
sian Crown  would  certainly  not  be  improved  by 


A  Prussian  Colonist  141 

any  attempt  to  bring  pecuniary  pressure  upon  its 
proprietor.  But  what  is  not  possible  in  a  diplo- 
matic service  capable  of  selecting  such  an  emissary 
as  von  Holleben  on  any  errand  requiring  know- 
ledge of  things  other  than  his  own  bureaucratic 
world?  Indeed  the  humourist  needs  no  imagina- 
tion when  seeking  material  for  screaming  farces — 
he  has  but  to  put  an  orthodox  Prussian  official 
into  a  world  of  real  men  and  the  thing  is  done. 

Far  away  to  the  eastward  of  Borneo  and  Java, 
and  northward  of  the  Australian  continent,  I 
touched  at  every  centre  of  Prussian  administra- 
tive activity  and  in  each  case  found  colonial 
Hollebens  tormented  by  paragraphs  from  official 
text-books  and  vainly  struggling  to  make  Germany 
beloved  amongst  a  native  population  which  had 
no  sympathy  whatever  with  the  outward  manifesta- 
tions of  Kultur.  The  history  of  British  coloniza- 
tion for  the  past  hundred  years  at  least  is  that  of 
a  government  reluctantly  giving  its  protection 
to  adventurous  colonists  who  have  already  estab- 
lished a  civil  government  and  ask  only  that  their 
rights  and  their  property  be  respected.  The 
Prussian  method  is  exactly  the  contrary.  First 
comes  the  warship  whose  guns  clear  the  ground 
for  the  first  governor  to  land  and  erect  signposts 
warning  the  natives  to  keep  off  the  grass,  to  play 


142  Prussian  Memories 

no  pianos  after  ten  o'clock,  not  to  ride  bicycles  on 
the  sidewalks,  and  above  all  to  use  no  language 
but  German.  To  say  that  the  German  colonial 
stations  of  New  Guinea  contain  more  sign-boards 
than  colonists  or  that  one  such  station  does  more 
official  bureaucratic  work  than  a  dozen  correspond- 
ing stations  in  British  India  or  Africa,  is  scant 
exaggeration.  The  Prussian  governor  approaches 
the  jungles  of  the  Bismarck  Archipelago  as  he 
would  the  laying  out  of  a  new  street  in  the.  suburbs 
of  Berlin,  and  after  thirty  years  of  evidence  to 
the  contrary,  Potsdam  and  Papua  remain  inter- 
changeable terms  with  the  German  colonial  office. 
And  that  is  why  at  each  station  that  I  visited  the 
notable  features  this  side  of  the  forest  were  the 
usual  residences  for  the  governor  and  his  staff,  a 
jail,  barracks  for  the  troops  and  native  police, 
very  well-kept  parade  ground  and  landing-stages, 
in  fact  everything  but  colonists  .Vine  governor 
promulgates  the  most  enlightenpa  laws  that  can  be 
framed  in  the  Wilhelmstrasse,  and  yet  the  natives 
take  to  the  woods  whenever  they  see  a  Prussian 
uniform.  Large  tracts  have  been  given  to  Roman 
Catholic  and  Lutheran  missions  on  condition 
that  they  teach  the  German  language,  and  yet 
German  missionaries  are  if  possible  more  cordially 
disliked  than  even  other  officials  of  the  colonial 


New  Guinea  143 

office.  To  be  sure  these  impressions  were  gathered 
in  1906  and  changes  may  have  occurred  since; 
but  until  the  spirit  of  Prussianism  changes  in 
Berlin  it  is  hard  to  think  of  a  German  colony 
save  as  a  military  outpost. 

A  genial  Bavarian  police-magistrate  who  had 
served  his  time  in  the  army  and  secured  a  billet 
in  the  interior  of  New  Guinea  gave  me  a  touching 
picture  of  colonial  administration  as  it  affected 
him.  His  official  residence  was  some  ten  miles 
inland  from  Matupi  and  the  governor  loaned  me  his 
horse  to  ride,  whilst  he  busied  himself  with  dis- 
patches that  had  to  be  ready  when  the  steamer 
sailed.  The  road  was  of  modern  German  con- 
struction, broad  and  well  engineered,  and  not  a 
single  house  or  human  the  whole  distance  as  I 
trotted  steadily  through  this  virgin  forest.  There 
were,  however,  humans,  and  I  noted  with  regret 
that  they  not  only  left  the  road  as  I  approached, 
but  disappeared  wholly  in  the  jungle  as  though 
suspecting  evil  design  on  the  part  of  every  white 
man.  As  I  rode  the  governor's  horse  and  talked 
Bavarian  that  went  to  the  police-magistrate's 
heart,  his  wife  made  us  a  delicious  dinner  whilst 
he  descanted  on  the  differences  between  Munich 
and  Matupi.  I  knew  that  almost  every  mission- 
ary station  in  German  New  Guinea  had  been  at 


144  Prussian  Memories 

some  time  the  object  of  native  hostility  and  the 
occasion  for  so-called  punitive  expeditions,  and 
the  reasons  are  simple  enough  to  any  one  who  is 
familiar  with  British  colonies  and  could  have  been 
with  me  on  that  blistering  hot  day  in  New  Guinea. 
Our  missionaries  receive  as  a  rule  salaries  from 
their  different  societies  and,  with  the  exception  of 
the  Roman  Catholics,  do  their  work  as  almost 
independent  units  who  must  find  favour  with  the 
natives  or  else  fail.  The  German  colonial  office 
is  more  thrifty  and  sees  in  the  missionary  body 
an  extension  of  domestic  educational  not  to  say 
administrative  machinery  that  must  be  adapted 
to  the  needs  of  the  Vaterland  whether  in  East 
Africa,  the  Cameruns,  Samoa,  or  the  Bismarck 
Archipelago.  We  must  think  of  a  colonial  office 
full  of  Hollebens  or  Hinzpeters  in  order  to  under- 
stand why  Imperial  Germany  with  her  million 
square  miles  of  colonial  territory  could  not  recruit 
as  many  volunteers  for  war  out  of  that  whole 
wilderness  as  Great  Britain  from  the  smallest  of 
her  West  India  Islands  or  the  poorest  district  of 
the  Punjaub. 

The  Prussian  missionary  arrives  and  the  gov- 
ernor instructs  him.  He  is  furnished  with  a  large 
piece  of  land  taken  from  the  natives  and  is  author- 
ized to  add  insult  to  injury  by  forcing  the  unwil- 


L£se-Missionary  145 

ling  pagan  to  cultivate  it.  The  governor  also 
places  at  his  disposal  the  local  police  whose  duty  it 
is  to  drag  back  from  out  of  the  jungle  natives  who 
refuse  to  work  for  the  missionary,  or  who  are  so 
sunk  in  prejudice  that  they  will  not  even  come  and 
learn  the  religion  of  their  conquerors  and  sing  the 
Watch  on  the  Rhine  in  German.  The  picture  of 
conscientious  truant  officers  armed  with  guns  and 
scouring  the  jungles  of  New  Guinea  for  bushy- 
headed,  cinnamon -coloured  boys  and  girls  who 
have  taken  to  the  tall  trees  rather  than  submit  to 
civilization  on  the  Prussian  plan,  forms  a  comic 
cartoon  were  it  not  so  frequently  tragic  in  its  con- 
sequences. To  the  German  all  natives  are  natives, 
and  in  flogging  those  whom  the  police  have  brought 
back  to  the  fold  it  sometimes  happens  that  a  man 
of  great  local  importance  is  outraged,  and  revenge 
follows,  and  a  missionary  hurt.  Now  with  us  a 
missionary  is  after  all  but  a  more  or  less  misguided 
man  who  accepts  a  salary  for  teaching  or  preach- 
ing much  as  a  young  mining  engineer  answers  a 
call  to  the  disturbed  districts  of  Mexico  or  the 
Yukon ;  if  he  is  robbed  or  killed  he  takes  his  chances 
along  with  the  rest  of  his  adventurous  comrades, 
and  the  world  goes  on  much  as  before.  But  in  the 
new  Germany  of  llse-majesti  and  /^e-Bismarck, 
/^-missionary  has  also  arrived — for  is  he  not  also 

10 


146  Prussian  Memories 

a  cog  in  the  Prussian  machine? — and  an  insult  to 
him  must  be  met  by  an  example  whose  "fright- 
fulness"  may  be  expected  to  deter  all  prospective 
laggards  in  the  march  of  missionary  Kultur.  The 
Prussian  gunboat  is  requisitioned,  villages  are 
shot  to  pieces,  troops  are  landed,  fires  are  started, 
and  maybe  a  few  natives  who  failed  to  make  their 
escape  in  time  are  caught  and  executed.  The 
expedition  then  returns  and  the  governor  writes 
innumerable  paragraphs  to  Berlin  relating  how 
by  consummate  knowledge  and  valour  a  great  up- 
rising has  been  nipped  in  the  bud  and  Prussian- 
ism  once  more  triumphantly  vindicated  in  the 
tropical  Pacific.  The  official  papers  receive  the 
news,  it  is  reproduced  in  every  provincial  organ 
of  the  Empire,  and  every  family  in  the  Fatherland 
glows  with  pride  in  the  thought  that  whilst  its 
little  circle  is  buried  in  peaceful  slumber  the 
vigilant  guardians  of  Germanism  are  spreading 
its  precepts  and  practices  at  the  uttermost  ends 
of  the  earth. 

Let  me  recall  the  seizure  of  Kiao-chao  in  1897, 
when  a  German  squadron  in  a  moment  of  profound 
peace  anchored  at  this  forlorn  port  and  proclaimed 
it  a  conquest  in  the  name  of  William  II.  So  little 
did  the  Chinese  authorities  anticipate  hostility 
that  they  apologized  to  Admiral  Diedrichs  because 


Kiao-chao  147 

they  had  no  powder  with  which  to  offer  him 
the  customary  salute.  But  Diedrichs  was  acting 
under  orders  here  as  he  was  to  do  in  Manila  Bay 
the  year  following,  and  brushing  the  Chinese  aside, 
he  set  to  work  organizing  a  military  station  of  the 
first  magnitude — a  northern  Hong-Kong — a  chal- 
lenge to  British  ascendancy  in  Chinese  waters. 

Now  Kiao-chao  is  in  the  province  of  Shantung 
— soil  sacred  to  Confucius.  German  missionaries 
were  no  more  desired  at  this  holy  shrine  of  the 
great  Chinese  saint  than  a  deputation  of  the 
Salvation  Army  at  Seville  during  Holy  Week. 
The  missionaries  were  warned,  but  as  parts  of  a 
great  machine  they  began  proselytizing  as  might  a 
demented  Calvinist  on  the  steps  of  Saint  Peter's. 
Two  missionaries  were  killed  in  Shantung,  and 
instead  of  Germany  marvelling  that  so  few  had 
fallen  victims  to  popular  indignation,  Admiral 
Diedrichs  seized  the  Bay  of  Kiao-chao  and  laid 
claim  to  Chinese  soil  for  a  city  there,  while  at  the 
same  time  his  master  acquired  exclusive  privileges 
over  a  province  about  equal  to  France  in  area  and 
population.  Perhaps  in  this  same  breath  it  would 
be  well  to  remind  Germans  that  Hong-Kong  was 
a  bleak  and  almost  uninhabited  island  ceded  to 
England  as  the  result  of  a  war  in  the  early  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  that  so  soon  as  the 


148  Prussian  Memories 

British  flag  commenced  to  fly  in  those  waters 
Chinese  coolies  and  merchants  came  and  settled 
in  such  numbers  that  very  soon  the  colony  re- 
sembled an  Anglo-Chinese  metropolis  of  commerce 
and  pleasure  rather  than  a  military  garrison  only. 
It  would  be  hard  to  find  anywhere  in  the  tropics 
a  place  of  residence  where  life  and  property  are 
more  secure  and  where  agreeable  cosmopolitan 
society  is  more  abundant  than  in  Hong-Kong, 
which  England  originally  took  over  with  great 
reluctance,  yet  now  prizes  as  one  of  the  proudest 
monuments  of  colonial  achievement.  My  last 
visit  there  was  in  1910  when  General  Sir  Frederick 
Lugard,  another  great  name  in  the  roll  of  empire- 
builders,  was  governor.  At  the  time  of  my  visit 
he  laid  the  foundation-stone  of  the  present  Hong- 
Kong  University,  not  with  the  noisy  advertise- 
ment of  a  Carnegie  Library  but  with  the  modesty 
of  the  great  soldier  and  administrator.  Today  I 
wonder  if  a  dozen  Englishmen  realize  that  in  a 
British  fortress  at  the  gates  of  Canton  Chinese 
money  has  been  invested  for  a  Chinese  university 
under  the  patronage  of  its  British  commander  and 
at  the  mercy  of  his  successors  in  office.  If  any  one 
can  suggest  a  more  eloquent  and  practical  tribute 
to  the  justice  and  generosity  of  British  colonial 
administration  I  should  be  much  interested.  Of 


German  New  Guinea  149 

course  the  need  of  such  a  university  has  been  long 
patent,  and  now  Chinese  students,  instead  of  mak- 
ing the  long  and  costly  journey  to  England  or  the 
United  States  for  a  medical  or  engineering  degree, 
can  secure  its  equivalent  in  Hong-Kong  and  yet 
remain  in  touch  with  their  families,  and  all  this 
at  a  comparatively  small  outlay  in  money.  Sir 
Frederick  told  me  that  not  only  did  private  mer- 
chants subscribe  handsomely,  but  even  governors 
of  Chinese  provinces,  and  this  at  a  moment  when 
the  noise  of  anti-foreign  Boxer  mobs  had  hardly 
subsided.  In  other  words,  the  prestige  of  Eng- 
land in  the  Far  East  is  the  prestige  enjoyed  by 
men  of  high  character  and  generous  behaviour  as 
against  newly  rich  competitors  whose  weapons  are 
intrigue,  industry,  and  violence. 

In  German  New  Guinea  I  was  warned  by  the 
governor  not  to  go  to  a  certain  island  where  the 
natives  were  ferocious  cannibals,  and  where  no 
white  man  was  safe.  So  I  waited  until  he  had 
retired  to  his  bureau,  when  I  launched  my  faithful 
canoe — the  same  old  Caribee — and  hoisting  sail, 
skimmed  gaily  over  the  long  rollers  until  I  reached 
the  forbidden  area,  when  I  made  everything  snug, 
put  all  my  canvas  and  spars  under  hatches,  and 
paddled  gingerly  about  just  out  of  range,  in  case 
the  governor  should  by  any  accident  have  blun- 


150  Prussian  Memories 

dered  upon  the  truth  in  matters  of  native  ad- 
ministration. Suddenly  a  venerable  Papuan  with 
vast  bushy  head-piece  and  much  tattoo  on  his 
person  appeared  out  of  the  dense  jungle  accom- 
panied by  two  young  and  muscular  sons.  They 
had  spears  and  gazed  at  me  after  the  manner  of  a 
wild  cat  on  an  overhanging  limb.  I  called  to  them 
in  a  mixture  of  Malay  and  pidgin  English  and 
they  retorted  by  inquiring  if  I  was  a  missionary 
or  a  German.  They  remained  savage  and  sulky 
until  I  satisfied  them  on  these  two  points,  when 
their  features  relaxed  and  I  took  advantage  of  the 
psychological  moment  to  paddle  close  in  shore  and 
formally  entrust  the  old  man  as  Mandor  with  my 
double-bladed  paddle,  thus  making  him  respon- 
sible for  my  life.  He  then  took  me  over  the  island 
where  only  a  few  days  before  thirteen  alleged 
ringleaders  had  been  executed  by  a  German  puni- 
tive expedition;  he  showed  me  their  graves  and 
the  damage  done  by  the  shells  from  the  gunboat. 
All  had  escaped  from  the  island  save  the  helpless 
women  and  children,  and  he  had  returned  as  chief 
representative  of  native  dignity  and  religion.  On 
this  island  I  spent  a  happy  day  and  when  the 
shadows  began  to  lengthen  it  seemed  as  though 
I  had  become  part  of  their  life  and  that  nothing 
more  was  lacking  but  a  flag,  a  gunboat,  and  a 


German  South  Africa  151 

Catling  gun  in  order  to  start  another  Eastern 
Empire  on  the  lines  of  Rajah  Brooke.  But  I  had 
duties  calling  me  then  to  Boston  and  so  we  parted, 
but  not  before  I  had  secured  from  the  old  man  the 
best  of  the  great  idols  in  his  temple  with  which  I 
paddled  back  to  the  German  steamship,  fortu- 
nately when  it  was  too  dark  for  any  one  to  interfere. 
Only  the  quartermaster  was  at  the  gangway  who 
helped  me  stow  my  trophy  amongst  the  spars  of 
the  upper  deck;  and  no  one  ever  heard  of  this 
until  we  were  well  on  our  way  and  I  took  the  cap- 
tain into  my  confidence.  My  canoe  was  only 
thirty  inches  beam,  and  as  the  idol  was  eight  feet 
in  length  and  had  to  be  balanced  on  the  deck 
combing  in  front  of  me  my  task  was  not  an  easy 
one.  There  was  a  long  swell  rolling  in  from  the 
Pacific,  and  a  native  mat-sail  catamaran  not  many 
miles  off  caused  me  to  make  a  large  detour  for  fear 
of  possible  difficulty  in  regard  to  my  precious  cargo. 

This  alleged  cannibal  island  was  only  five  miles 
from  the  governor's  bureau  in  a  straight  line,  but 
considering  the  heavy  swell,  the  tropical  heat,  the 
forced  detour,  and  my  own  feelings,  it  was  one  of 
the  longest  and  hardest  of  my  canoe  experiences — 
but  also  most  valuable  as  a  lesson  in  colonial 
administration. 

Perhaps  in  closing  this  chapter  I  ought  to  add 


152  Prussian  Memories 

that  even  in  1896,  during  my  six  months  in  South 
Africa,  when  Boers  and  Britons  were  on  anything 
but  friendly  terms,  a  party  of  burghers  trekked 
away  into  German  South-West  Africa  from  the 
Cape  Colony,  having  been  encouraged  so  to  do 
not  merely  by  their  dislike  of  all  government, 
but  because  of  the  Kruger  telegram  which  made 
them  anticipate  a  warm  reception  in  the  colonial 
dominions  of  William  II.  But  they  all  trekked 
back  as  poor  as  they  went  except  in  experience. 
So  far  from  receiving  welcome,  the  Prussian  ad- 
ministrators treated  them  as  trespassers,  burdened 
them  with  unwonted  taxes,  insisted  upon  German 
and  not  Dutch  as  the  language  of  intercourse,  and 
in  short  sent  them  back  to  British  territory  with 
no  desire  ever  again  to  seek  under  the  Black  Eagle 
the  liberty  they  thought  was  lacking  under  the 
Union  Jack. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

Fukushima — The  Fool's  Revenge 

1 T  was  in  Berlin  that  I  first  met  Fukushima,  and 
for  the  whole  period  of  his  German  service,  that 
is  to  say  from  1887  to  1892,  he  was  to  me  a  most 
valuable  social  and  professional  asset  during  the 
annual  mobilizations  and  grand  manoeuvres  con- 
ducted by  the  Emperor.  During  those  years  the 
American  Government  sent  also  military  attaches 
who  could  speak  no  language  but  their  own  and 
were  about  as  useful  as  a  nursery  maid  in  the 
conning  tower  of  a  torpedo  boat.  Yet  our  officers 
managed  fairly  well  because  there  was  always  a 
good-natured  British  colonel  to  help  them  and, 
besides,  the  Emperor  spoke  excellent  English  as 
did  many  of  his  military  suite. 

But  Fukushima  apparently  spoke  nothing,  knew 
nothing,  did  not  wish  to  know  anything,  showed 
no  desire  to  know  anybody,  still  less  did  he  show 
any  desire  to  impart  information  to  his  military 
or  diplomatic  colleagues. 


154  Prussian  Memories 

He  was  of  course  scrupulously  polite  as  are  all 
Japanese.  He  never  failed  to  bow  ceremoniously 
to  each  of  his  colleagues  in  turn  and  to  acknowledge 
punctiliously  any  civility  extended  to  him.  But 
in  other  respects  he  was  hopelessly  an  outsider 
to  the  other  guests  of  the  Emperor,  and  many 
were  the  murmurs  I  heard  from  German  officers 
— the  regrets  that  the  Imperial  Headquarters 
should  be  choked  by  weird  yellow  manikins  who 
obviously  had  no  means  of  appreciating  their 
Teutonic  opportunities. 

Now  twelve  years  before  meeting  Fukushima 
I  had  been  wrecked  on  the  coast  of  Japan  and  been 
entertained  in  families  known  to  Fukushima.  At 
any  rate  the  little  major  showed  to  me  a  side  of 
himself  which  he  concealed  from  his  official  circle. 
We  talked  of  old  Japan  history  and  new  Japan 
ideals;  he  pulled  out  for  me  hundreds  of  photo- 
graphs he  had  taken  in  the  debatable  land  of  East- 
ern Europe — for  already  he  had  been  a  traveller  of 
wide  range  in  America  no  less  than  Europe. 

But  to  his  colleagues  he  was  merely  the  little 
yellow  dwarf  for  whom  the  Emperor  had  to 
provide  a  toy  horse  for  fear  of  an  equestrian 
tragedy. 

One  day  Colonel  Swayne,  the  British  attache, 
accosted  Fukushima. 


Fukushima  155 

"I  say,  Major,  how  does  your  breech  block 
work  compared  to  this  Mauser?" 

"Yes,"  answered  Fukushima,  "I  think  it  is  a 
fine  day!" 

"No,"  protested  the  Colonel.  "I  mean,  what 
sort  of  a  rifle  have  you  got " 

"Oh  yes,"  answered  Fukushima.  "A  little 
rain  will  do  much  good." 

"I'm  afraid  I  don't  make  my  meaning  clear," 
said  the  kindly  Briton. 

"Perfectly,"  answered  the  equally  pleased 
Samurai,  "it  will  lay  the  dust  and— 

"Damn!"  said  the  Briton  softly  and  sought 
consolation  by  converse  with  the  voluble  Russian 
who  told  him  about  a  new  ballet  at  Moscow. 

Shortly  afterwards  the  British  Colonel  and  I 
happened  to  be  riding  side  by  side  when  he  said : 
"I  don't  see  how  you  get  on  with  that  little  exotic 
— that  Japanese  doll.  I'm  sure  he  knows  nothing 
for  I  can't  get  an  intelligent  answer  out  of  him. 
It's  my  private  opinion  that  he's  simply  an  idiot!" 

And  Fukushima  meant  to  be  an  idiot — to  him! 

Nor  is  it  the  first  time  that  wise  men  have  as- 
sumed the  garb  of  a  fool  in  order  to  pass  more 
securely  to  their  goal. 

Fukushima  played  the  fool  to  perfection;  had 
he  not  done  so  he  would  never  have  reached  home 


156  Prussian  Memories 

alive — never  have  led  his  countrymen  to  victory 
in  two  great  wars,  one  against  China,  the  second 
against  Russia.  And  possibly  at  this  moment  of 
writing  he  may  be  breaking  the  power  of  Germany 
in  the  Far  East. 

In  1891,  the  grand  German  manoeuvres  were 
between  Cassel  and  Erfurt,  and  the  most  con- 
spicuous of  the  Imperial  guests  was  the  Czar's  per- 
sonal representative  at  the  side  of  William  II., 
the  mysterious  General  Kutusoff  who  was  like  a 
Muscovite  shadow  in  the  Prussian  Court  circle 
and  whose  duty  it  was  to  report  to  his  master  in 
Petrograd  every  word  that  fell  from  the  lips  of  his 
cousin  at  Potsdam.  Kutusoff  overheard  the  last 
of  the  Hohenzollern  utterances  during  this  year — 
never  since  has  Russia  cared  to  keep  up  the  out- 
ward semblance  of  inner  affection  that  marked  the 
relations  of  the  two  courts  during  the  lifetime  of 
William  I. 

During  these  manoeuvres  of  1891  many  military 
attaches  went  sadly  astray — perhaps  led  astray 
by  the  German  officers  detailed  as  their  military 
mentors — but  Fukushima  never.  It  was  a  treat 
to  me  to  run  over  the  map  with  him  after 
the  dislocation  of  troops  had  been  announced. 
He  seemed  to  divine  the  possibilities  of  the 
great  game  and  placed  his  finger  like  a  prophet 


A  Great  Ride  157 

at  the  point  to  which  I  never  galloped  in 
vain. 

After  the  manoeuvres  of  1891,  he  clambered  to 
the  top  of  a  tough  Cossack  pony  and  with  a  single 
servant  took  one  of  the  longest  rides  on  record — 
not  merely  across  Russia  and  Mongolia,  but  up 
and  down  and  around  the  territory  that  has  since 
been  fought  over  by  Russians,  Chinese,  and  Japan- 
ese. His  ride  covered  about  9000  miles  or  three 
times  across  this  Continent ;  and  no  one  who 
knows  him  wonders  that  he  was  a  leading  strategic 
spirit  in  the  Chinese  War  of  1894  an(^  still  more  so 
in  that  against  Russia,  in  1904. 

Fukushima  can  smile  softly  when  told  that  his 
colleagues  of  Berlin  regarded  him  as  a  fool.  He 
will  recall  the  Forty-seven  Ronins  and  other  tales 
of  high  revenge !  He  notes  that  not  one  of  his  col- 
leagues in  Berlin  has  yet  emerged  from  their 
routine  obscurity. 

In  1898,  I  stopped  in  Tokyo  on  my  way  home 
from  the  Philippines  and  called  on  little  Fuku- 
shima, who  had  become  a  great  general  and  popular 
hero.  He  was  playing  with  his  children;  they 
laughed  and  romped  about  him  and  he  entered 
into  their  mood  with  the  simplicity  characteristic 
of  those  who  are  great  by  nature.  We  talked  of 
what  was  then  the  general  European  purpose — 


158  Prussian  Memories 

the  partition  of  China.  Fukushima  wasted  no 
more  words  on  this  than  he  had  at  the  German 
manoeuvres.  He  merely  shook  his  head,  and 
that  meant  Chinese  Integrity  with  a  Japanese 
Guaranty. 

Then  was  announced  for  the  first  time  in  history 
a  deputation  of  Chinese  officers  come  to  study  the 
art  of  war  from  the  nation  they  had  always  pre- 
tended to  despise.  Of  course  I  offered  to  retire, 
but  Fukushima  held  me  to  witness  this,  the  crown- 
ing triumph  of  the  1894  campaign.  There  entered 
several  dozen  big  burly  warriors  in  most  unwarlike 
gowns  and  queues  and  padded  slippers.  They 
drank  tea  and  smiled  and  talked  and  made  obei- 
sance to  the  little  Japanese  Napoleon  who  proved 
in  the  end  to  be  their  truest  friend. 

The  same  diplomatic  blindness  that  alienated 
England  in  1896  and  America  in  1898  created 
enemies  also  in  the  Far  East  for  such  as  could  not 
penetrate  the  disguise  of  Fukushima  at  the  Ger- 
man Court.  William  II.  in  those  days  preached  a 
holy  war  against  the  pagan  in  terms  recalling  the 
good  old  days  of  Peter  the  Hermit  or  Richard 
Cceur  de  Lion.  It  was  not  enough  that  Germany 
seized  Shantung  and  Kiao-chao — her  Emperor 
launched  a  cartoon  insulting  the  religion  of  some 
400  millions  of  very  intelligent  and  highly  sensitive 


Diplomatic  Blindness  159 

Chinese  and  Japanese.  This  broadside  might  have 
done  well  enough  had  it  been  perpetrated  by  a 
missionary  society;  but  in  this  case  the  author 
was  none  other  than  the  Emperor  of  Germany  and 
it  bore  therefore  a  character  comparable  to  that  of 
a  Papal  Bull.  The  meek  and  forgiving  Buddha 
was  pictured  as  a  savage  monster  raging  with 
desire  to  massacre  Christians;  and  the  title  given 
to  this  demagogic  specimen  of  Hohenzollerisch 
hysteria  was:  "People  of  Europe,  unite  in  the 
defence  of  your  most  sacred  treasures!" 

The  Oriental  forgives  much  and  resents  little — 
but  he  forgets  nothing  and  will  get  everything 
worth  having  in  his  own  time. 

Let  America  be  wise  and  do  justice  to  Japan, 
for  only  through  justice  need  we  expect  mercy  at 
her  hands  when  the  day  of  reckoning  comes. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Diplomacy :  German- American 

IT  has  been  often  remarked  that  Russia  is  a  despot- 
*•  •  ism  tempered  by  the  venality  of  its  police, 
but  Prussian  despotism  is  very  honest  and  aggra- 
vated by  the  tactlessness  of  its  conscientious  offi- 
cials. But  who  am  I,  a  Yankee,  that  dare  to 
throw  stones  while  myself  inhabiting  a  most  vitre- 
ous abode?  On  my  first  visit  to  Shanghai,  the 
American  Consul-General  was  in  jail  for  embezzle- 
ment of  the  mails  entrusted  to  his  care ;  and  on  my 
second  visit  another  United  States  Consul-General 
was  being  prosecuted  under  fifteen  indictments, 
any  one  of  which  would  have  stopped  the  civil 
career  of  a  German.  In  1898,  there  was  but  one 
American  Consul  between  Singapore  and  Yoko- 
hama fit  for  decent  society,  and  the  son  of  the 
United  States  Minister  was  borrowing  the  prestige 
of  his  legation  in  order  to  act  as  commission  agent 
for  an  Austrian  trading-house.  The  first  Ameri- 
can Ambassador  to  Berlin  could  speak  neither 

1 60 


American  Consuls  161 

French  nor  German,  and  as  he  could  not  afford  a 
dwelling-place  commensurate  with  his  rank  he 
returned  to  his  native  State  (New  Jersey),  having 
learned  as  much  of  diplomacy  as  any  other  tourist. 
But  the  consular  service  was  even  better  calculated 
to  excite  in  the  German  popular  mind  that  con- 
tempt for  the  American  Government  so  abun- 
dantly expressed  during  the  Spanish  War  and 
today.  In  my  time  seventy-two  per  cent,  of  so- 
called  American  consuls  in  Germany  were  German 
Jews  who  for  more  than  one  reason  were  not  re- 
garded as  desirable  associates  by  official  or  aca- 
demic Germany.  During  the  years  I  spent  in 
Munich,  the  American  Consul  was  a  disreputable 
descendant  of  Abraham  who  used  his  official 
position  for  the  purpose  of  extracting  money  from 
local  tradespeople  to  whom  he  brought  rich  Ameri- 
can tourists;  and  especially  from  German-Ameri- 
cans in  distress  whose  claims  at  law  he  professed 
to  press  through  his  alleged  influence.  During 
this  man's  tenure  of  office  there  came  to  Munich 
an  assistant  Secretary  of  State  named  Pearce  who 
was  enjoying  a  free  tour  of  Europe  at  the  expense 
of  the  American  taxpayer.  His  ostensible  mission 
was  to  inspect  the  various  consular  offices.  This 
inspection  consisted  in  being  shown  the  town  by 
the  interested  Consul  and  enjoying  at  every  stage 


1 62  Prussian  Memories 

of  his  journey  the  distractions  congenial  to  com- 
mercial travellers  on  our  western  circuit.  I  man- 
aged to  secure  his  attention  for  an  hour  over  a  cup 
of  tea  with  Mrs.  Gertrude  Atherton,  and  we  two 
gave  him  chapter  and  verse  regarding  the  system- 
atic scoundrelism  of  our  representative  in  Bavaria. 
He  was  a  pleasant  man  and  smiled  pleasantly  as 
he  closed  his  visit  with  a  remark  he  had  probably 
made  in  a  dozen  other  places — that  this  particular 
Consul  happened  to  be  the  appointee  or  creature 
of  some  political  boss  and  that  all  the  machinery 
of  the  State  Department  would  be  invoked  in  vain 
unless  we  had  witnesses  who  could  swear  that 
they  saw  his  hands  in  another  man's  pockets. 
When  I  talked  on  the  matter  with  the  late  John 
Hay,  who  had  been  Secretary  under  my  father  in 
Paris  and  to  whom  I  ever  remained  like  one  of  his 
family,  he  listened  with  kindly  indulgence,  and 
then  told  consular  tales  within  his  own  experience, 
so  much  worse  diplomatically  and  so  infinitely 
more  diverting  from  a  literary  point  of  view  that 
I  parted  from  him  convinced  that  the  American 
Consul  must  be  a  grafter  and  the  good  one  is  he 
who  grafts  less  than  his  colleagues. 

But  this  is  no  more  true  than  many  another 
generalization  made  under  the  smart  of  personal 
wrong  endured ;  for  I  can  recall  plenty  of  patriotic 


Herbert  Bo  wen  163 

white  Americans  who  have  served  their  country 
in  consular  and  diplomatic  posts  not  merely 
honestly  and  ably  but  at  considerable  sacrifice  to 
their  purse.  Herbert  Bowen  was  our  Consul  in 
Barcelona  when  the  Spanish  War  raised  the  mob 
against  him;  and  instead  of  running  away  as  did 
our  representative  in  South  Africa  at  the  outbreak 
of  the  Boer  War,  he  barricaded  himself  in  and 
kept  revolvers  cocked  until  the  storm  blew  over, 
when  those  who  had  but  recently  thirsted  for  his 
blood  now  sought  to  kiss  him  on  both  cheeks. 
Yet  this  same  Bowen  who  would  have  been  a 
cabinet  officer  under  British  rule  was  turned  out 
of  the  diplomatic  service  by  Roosevelt  along  with 
many  another  whose  crime  consisted  in  a  stubborn 
adherence  to  the  truth. 

Richard  Sprague  was  Consul  at  Gibraltar  and 
dared  not  go  out  at  night,  so  threatening  was  the 
attitude  of  the  Spaniards  who  could  not  forgive 
his  having  prevented  the  departure  of  coal-ships 
for  the  Spanish  navy  during  that  same  war; 
but  Sprague  did  his  duty,  has  worked  no  political 
wires,  and  will  die  poor  like  many  another  public 
servant  who  loves  his  country  more  than  money. 
For  years  in  Berlin  all  there  was  of  respectability 
in  American  life  revolved  about  the  person  of 
J.  B.  Jackson,  the  first  Secretary.  He  was  a 


164  Prussian  Memories 

graduate  of  Annapolis,  he  knew  French  and  Ger- 
man well,  took  infinite  pains  to  know  everything 
about  Germany  that  could  assist  diplomatic  nego- 
tiations, and  was  in  fact  for  many  years  the  only 
practical  means  of  intercourse  between  the  German 
Foreign  Office  and  the  American  Department  of 
State.  Needless  to  say  he  had  to  spend  more  than 
three  times  his  salary  on  the  mere  rent  of  an  ade- 
quate apartment  and  would  have  gone  on  doing 
it  cheerfully  but  that  some  politician  needed  a 
job,  and  so  Jackson  was  forced  out  of  the  service 
by  Roosevelt;  and  so  on  through  a  wearisome  list 
which  young  men  might  ponder  with  advantage 
when  they  tell  me  serenely  that  they  are  going 
abroad  to  study  languages  and  fit  themselves  for 
a  diplomatic  career.  To  be  sure  it  had  its  fasci- 
nation for  me  many  years  ago  when  Cleveland  was 
first  elected  and  when  all  youngsters  of  my  age 
were  keen  in  matters  of  municipal  and  tariff  re- 
form; but  when  I  broached  the  matter  to  my 
father,  he  said:  "So  far  from  encouraging  you  to 
seek  a  diplomatic  appointment,  I  would  as  soon 
see  you  laid  out  for  burial  as  succeed  in  such  an 
effort" — nor  was  my  father  wholly  in  joke,  and 
needless  to  say  time  has  abundantly  vindicated 
the  advice  so  grimly  given. 

There  are  many  Americans  who  from  time  to 


Value  of  Diplomatic  Service      165 

time  advocate  the  complete  abolition  of  diplo- 
matic agents  in  Europe  on  the  ground  that  they 
are  undemocratic  or  unsomething  else,  but  this 
is  too  much  like  refusing  to  wash  because  the  water 
is  occasionally  dirty.  Europe  is  annually  flooded 
with  Americans  who  are  seeking  information  on 
important  subjects  in  many  departments  where 
Europe  has  a  most  precious  storehouse  rilled  with 
the  accumulation  of  centuries.  What  could  Pres- 
cott  or  Washington  Irving  have  done  had  they 
not  enjoyed  special  privileges  in  the  Spanish 
archives  ?  And  how  can  these  privileges  be  secured 
save  through  properly  accredited  American  agents? 
My  own  work  in  English  archives  would  have  been 
futile  had  not  James  Russell  Lowell  been  then 
our  Minister  in  England,  and  of  course  my  German 
work  would  never  have  been  undertaken  had  not 
the  Emperor  secured  for  me  a  key  to  invaluable 
state  papers.  The  American  student  has  a  hard 
time  in  Europe  when  seeking  access  to  officials  or 
private  collections  and  has  no  other  sponsor  than 
such  an  impossibility  as  the  American  Consul  who 
disgraced  the  American  Government  in  Munich 
for  many  years. 

To  make  war  popular,  we  must  first  render 
odious  the  people  against  whom  we  make  prepa- 
ration, and  when  that  people  sends  as  represen- 


1 66  Prussian  Memories 

tatives  men  unworthy  of  popular  respect,  a  long 
step  is  taken  towards  cultivating  the  notion  that 
people  with  such  representatives  must  be  a  sorry 
lot.  We  had  in  Madrid  in  1897,  one  Hannis 
Taylor  who  as  American  Minister  did  perhaps  as 
much  to  make  this  country  contemptible  in  Span- 
ish eyes  as  any  other  agency  that  provoked  the 
Spanish  War.  When  I  called  at  his  office,  not 
knowing  even  who  was  the  Minister,  a  coarse, 
slouchy,  stevedore-looking  man  in  shirt-sleeves 
opened  the  door  and,  supposing  him  to  be  the 
janitor,  I  asked  if  there  was  an  American  Minister 
on  the  premises,  to  which  he  replied  that  he  was 
that  exalted  functionary.  He  had  no  secretary; 
he  knew  no  French  or  Spanish,  and  the  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs  said  to  me  pathetically  that 
Spain  would  feel  so  very  grateful  if  we  could  send 
to  Madrid  a  representative  with  whom  he,  the 
late  Canovas,  could  enter  into  conversation.  This 
American  Minister  told  me  he  slept  in  the  office, 
and  had  his  meals  brought  in  from  a  neighbouring 
restaurant  by  the  Spanish  office-boy — all  of  which 
indicated  a  spirit  given  to  thrift  if  not  to  the 
higher  flights  of  diplomatic  ambition.  I  noticed 
that  the  walls  were  hung  with  unframed  canvases 
suggestive  of  old  masters,  and  John  Hay  told  me 
subsequently  that  these  were  shipped  to  Christie's 


Diplomatic  Mediocrity  167 

in  London  to  be  auctioned  off  upon  gullible  tour- 
ists, but  that  their  authenticity  was  so  problemati- 
cal that  even  the  auctioneer  refused  to  apply  to 
them  the  names  given  by  our  Minister  of  the 
United  States  in  Madrid.  When  the  history  of 
these  times  comes  to  be  written,  the  future  Tacitus 
will  be  at  a  loss  to  determine  which  did  most  to 
precipitate  the  Spanish  War,  the  yellow  press  of 
William  Randolph  Hearst  or  the  yellow  diplomacy 
of  Hannis  Taylor. 

And  now  no  Prussian  need  feel  that  my  views 
regarding  the  Holleben,  Hinzpeter,  Bernstorff, 
and  Dernburg  type  of  diplomat  spring  from  a 
narrow  conceit  that  America  alone  produces  the 
best  samples  of  national  representation.  Yet 
here  again  after  I  have  said  the  best  for  Prussia 
in  this  field,  I  am  not  able  to  rise  to  a  higher  level 
than  the  deadly  monotonous  mediocrity  of  such 
honest,  painstaking,  and  blundering  officials  as 
can  be  seen  today  wherever  the  Black  Eagle  carries 
Kultur  across  the  seas,  whether  to  a  great  capital 
on  the  Potomac  or  a  missionary  station  in  the 
South  Seas.  With  American  diplomacy  or  con- 
sular service  we  have  abundant  examples  of 
egregious  incompetence,  flunkeyism,  and  pecuniary 
dishonesty,  yet  at  the  same  time  our  annals  are 
every  now  and  then  illuminated  by  such  names  as 


1 68  Prussian  Memories 

George  Bancroft,  Andrew  D.  White,  and  Bayard 
Taylor,  in  Berlin ;  a  Motley,  in  Vienna ;  a  Washing- 
ton Irving,  in  Spain;  a  Benjamin  Franklin,  in 
Paris;  and  finally  James  Russell  Lowell,  John  Hay, 
and  Choate,  in  London.  A  brilliant  man  in 
office  cannot  always  undo  the  evil  work  of  his 
predecessor,  but  he  can  at  least  give  to  optimists 
at  home  an  idea  of  what  this  country  could  achieve 
were  the  administration  of  its  foreign  affairs  en- 
trusted to  hands  one  tithe  as  capable  as  the  head 
clerks  of  an  average  firm  of  exporters. 
But  this  is  merely  a  digression. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

Bismarck    and    William    II. — Herbert    Bismarck — 
Edward  VII. 

T^HE  Emperor  did  not  dismiss  Bismarck.  He 
-••  merely  accepted  Bismarck's  challenge  which 
was  that  if  the  Master  dared  do  so  and  so,  he  the 
servant  would  no  longer  serve.  The  royal  Master 
did  do  so  and  so,  but  the  Prime  Minister  did  not 
carry  out  his  part  of  the  bargain.  Therefore 
after  a  reasonable  interval,  William  II.  sent  round 
to  inquire  why  Bismarck  still  remained  occupying 
official  quarters — and  on  this  hint  the  Pilot  packed 
his  wallet  and  went  over  the  side. 

William  II.  ever  spoke  to  me  in  most  affection- 
ate terms  of  Bismarck ;  and  in  regard  to  this  retire- 
ment of  the  crabbed  old  Chancellor  his  act  was 
purely  patriotic  and  impersonal  as  relieving  from 
command  a  general  no  longer  useful  in  the  field. 
But  a  man  may  be  a  Napoleon  yet  not  be  a  gentle- 
man, all  of  which  is  abundantly  illustrated  by  the 
manner  in  which  the  great  Chancellor  occupied 

•69 


170  Prussian  Memories 

years  of  leisure  that  might  have  been  devoted  to 
making  his  name  brilliant  in  other  fields. 

Herbert  Bismarck  with  dramatic  emphasis  in- 
sisted upon  retiring  along  with  his  father,  hop- 
ing that  the  Bismarck  strike  would  be  successful 
if  the  whole  family  united.  The  Emperor  begged 
Herbert  to  reconsider,  assuring  him  that  his  per- 
sonal relations  to  them  both  remained  the  same. 
Herbert,  however,  was  a  Prussian,  and  the  Em- 
peror was  forced  to  look  elsewhere  for  help  in 
foreign  affairs. 

But  Bismarck  had  foreseen  the  possibility  of 
such  a  strike  on  his  part,  and  had  resolved  to  leave 
no  successor.  My  point  can  be  made  clearer  by 
calling  attention  to  the  splendid  body  of  staff 
officers  educated  by  Moltke.  But  then  Moltke 
was  not  a  Prussian — he  was  a  great  man,  a  man 
who  worked  out  great  problems  in  silence  and 
shared  his  results  with  a  band  of  devoted  soldiers 
whose  highest  ambition  was  to  keep  the  military 
machine  in  a  state  of  perfection  and  to  pass  it  on 
from  one  generation  to  the  other  unimpaired. 

Bismarck  created  a  name  for  himself  alone — 
Moltke  left  a  school  of  disciples,  all  working 
unselfishly  for  a  common  good. 

When  we  speak  of  great  Prussians,  or  rather 
when  we  analyse  the  noisy  claims  of  those  who 


The  Rise  of  Prussia  171 

wave  the  flag  of  Prussian  Kultur,  it  reminds  me  a 
little  of  an  Irishman  with  whom  I  discussed  Land 
League  politics  many  years  ago  near  Bantry  Bay. 

Said  I,  "You  suffer,  no  doubt,  from  the  curse  of 
absentee  landlords?" 

"Is  it  absentee  landlords  you're  speaking  of?" 
said  he.  "Why  the  place  fairly  shwarrms  with 
'em!" 

Prussia  was  raised  from  the  dregs  in  1813,  and 
the  men  who  made  her  great  bear  names  which 
gain  in  lustre  as  we  study  them  in  detail.  Prus- 
sians brag  of  them  and  crown  them  in  the  Berlin 
Valhalla,  but  how  many  of  them  are  Prussians? 
Blucher,  Gneisenau,  and  Scharnhorst  were  no 
more  Prussian  than  Moltke,  yet  without  those 
three  there  would  have  been  no  universal  service, 
no  victory  at  the  Katzbach  and  above  all  no 
culminating  triumph  at  Waterloo.  Gneisenau  was 
Austrian,  Scharnhorst  Hanoverian,  and  Blucher 
from  Swedish  Pomerania.  As  for  Baron  Stein, 
he  was  from  Nassau  in  the  Rhine-land  and  Ernst 
Moritz  Arndt,  who  was  to  him  what  Alexander 
Hamilton  was  to  Washington,  had  no  drop  of 
Prussian  blood  in  his  veins. 

And  if  we  take  a  yet  broader  view  of  Kultur  as 
glorified  in  Berlin  monuments  and  name  such 
names  as  Goethe  and  Schiller,  Gutenberg  and 


172  Prussian  Memories 

Luther,  Mozart  and  Beethoven,  Korner  and 
Lessing,  and  so  ad  infinitum,  we  find  that  these 
belong  rather  to  the  world  of  cosmopolitan  Europe 
by  blood  and  training  and  have  little  in  common 
with  a  monarchy  whose  pride  centres  in  a  parade 
ground  of  Potsdam  rather  than  in  a  Florence  or 
Pisa. 

But  to  come  back  to  Herbert  Bismarck.  We 
were  fellow-guests  of  the  Emperor  on  a  cruise 
from  Brindisi  to  the  Piraeus  by  way  of  Corfu  and 
Patras.  Our  ship  had  been  chartered  for  the 
Imperial  suite,  and  Bismarck  the  Second  was  of 
course  the  Dean  of  our  Faculty,  who  occupied 
the  head  of  the  table  and  did  honours  in  the  name 
of  our  Imperial  host — who  had  taken  another 
route  accompanied  by  the  Empress;  and  we  were 
all  to  meet  in  Athens  for  the  wedding  of  the  Em- 
peror's sister  to  the  then  Crown  Prince,  the  present 
King  Constantine  of  Greece. 

Herbert  represented  the  Foreign  Office,  and 
therefore  the  Imperial  visit  bore  a  highly  official 
character  aside  from  its  family  and  social  one. 
He  placed  me  on  his  right  and  treated  me  with 
marked  attention,  carrying  goodwill  so  far  as  to 
promise  me  the  English  rights  in  his  father's  pro- 
spective memoirs,  at  least  so  far  as  editing  and 
translating  were  concerned.  But  as  Prussia  has 


Herbert  Bismarck  173 

not  yet  evolved  the  concept  club  or  gentleman  so 
the  English  language  has  no  adequate  equivalent 
for  the  German  word  burschikos,  of  which  this 
Bismarckian  diplomatist  was  an  excellent  example, 
if  we  can  imagine  a  person  of  such  exalted  rank 
and  responsibilities  eternally  carousing  and  jesting 
as  do  many  reckless  students  on  a  lark.  At  our 
first  dinner  on  board,  the  chief  steward  offered  us 
champagne  in  the  usual  glasses,  but  Herbert 
arrested  the  bending  bottle  with  the  peremptory 
demand:  "Who  pays  for  this  champagne?"  and 
when  the  steward  answered:  "Everything  here, 
your  Excellency,  is  at  the  expense  of  His  Majesty, " 
our  vice-regal  host  thundered  indignantly:  "What 
do  you  mean  by  such  miserable  little  glasses? 
Bring  me  something  fit  for  a  thirsty  man ! "  Long- 
drink  glasses  were  then  substituted  and  the  Em- 
peror had  no  reason  to  complain  that  his  cellar 
was  slighted,  at  least  so  far  as  Bismarck  the  Second 
was  concerned.  He  was  a  monumental  eater  and 
drinker.  I  never  saw  him  drunk,  nor  yet  sober. 
He  seemed  everlastingly  quenching  a  thirst  that 
knew  no  bounds,  and  drank  everything  excepting 
water.  Never  was  Imperial  party  more  hilarious 
— we  laughed  and  joked  from  morning  till  night, 
and  while  many  of  Herbert's  stories  were  scan- 
dalous to  the  ears  of  Countess  Brockdorff,  chief 


174  Prussian  Memories 

lady-in-waiting  to  the  Empress,  he  laughed  but  the 
louder  when  reminded  of  her  presence  and  said 
that  such  a  tonic  would  do  her  good. 

We  reached  the  prosperous  port  of  Patras  early 
in  the  morning  but  not  too  early  for  the  Greeks, 
who  had  sent  out  a  delegation  of  political  notables, 
all  dressed  in  conventional  evening  attire  with 
white  kid  gloves,  and  chapeaux-daque  under  their 
arms,  eager  to  salute  the  great  statesman,  with  a 
roll  of  manuscript  from  which  a  Demosthenic 
oration  appeared  imminent. 

Count  Herbert  was  with  difficulty  roused  from 
bed,  and  when  he  finally  stumbled  up  to  the  rail 
of  the  poop-deck  and  gazed  down  upon  the  com- 
patriots of  Marco  Bozzaris  he  bellowed  forth  in 
great  glee:  "Now  come  the  Greek  wine-pedlars — 
I  know  them — Oinopoleo — That's  the  word!" 

In  vain  we  seized  his  arm  and  reminded  him  that 
these  gentlemen  were  dignitaries  of  State,  but  he 
roared  the  more  merrily:  "What's  the  difference? 
They  don't  understand  a  word  of  German." 
And  as  he  thus  guffawed  and  bellowed,  the  most 
dignified  and  courteous  of  Peloponnesians  stepped 
forward,  and  with  a  profound  bow  started  in  upon 
a  very  distinct  and  highly  flattering  oration  in 
purest  German. 

Young  Bismarck  could  not  grow  more  red  in 


German  Diplomacy  in  Greece     175 

the  face,  but  he  was  glad  when  the  ordeal  was 
over,  and  if  the  people  of  Patras  still  talk  of  the 
Bismarck  mission  it  'is  with  a  fervent  prayer  that 
Prussian  kultur  may  always  be  handicapped  by 
such  bungling  diplomacy. 

Next  day  we  of  the  German  Imperial  Mission 
all  had  rendezvous  at  the  Palace  in  Athens,  where 
the  programme  for  the  wedding  festivities  was  to 
be  announced  and  opportunity  was  to  be  offered 
for  the  German  attaches  and  aides-de-camp  to 
make  a  pleasant  impression  upon  their  hosts  at 
the  Court  of  the  Hellenes.  I  was  chatting  with 
that  most  courteous  of  Southerners,  Walker 
Fearn  of  Louisiana,  who  then  represented  the 
United  States,  when  Herbert  Bismarck  stopped 
to  shake  hands  with  me  and  say  a  few  gracious 
words.  Of  course  I  took  great  pleasure  in  present- 
ing our  Minister  to  the  great  man,  and  after  a  few 
words,  Herbert  suddenly  recollected  that  he  had 
business  of  moment,  and  exclaimed  in  a  loud  voice, 
as  of  one  accustomed  to  command:  "Where  is  the 
Lord  Chamberlain  ?  "  Walker  Fearn,  to  whom  the 
question  was  partly  addressed,  said  in  very  good 
French:  "Does  Your  Excellency  refer  to  the 
Chamberlain  of  His  Hellenic  Majesty?" 

"Oh,  damn  your  Hellenic  Majesty,"  said  Bis- 
marck, "I  mean  the  Emperor" — and  catching 


176  Prussian  Memories 

sight  of  the  Prussian  uniform,  which  just  then 
interested  him  most,  he  stalked  away,  leaving 
behind  him  a  backwash  of  scowling  faces  and 
semi-suppressed  imprecations,  all  of  which  added 
very  little  to  the  delight  in  Athens  over  the  coming 
of  a  Prussian  Princess. 

These  are  all  mere  trifles — for  what  after  all 
does  it  matter  that  one  man  more  or  less  is  ill- 
mannered,  inebriate,  or  tactless? — But  the  Greeks 
are  a  sensitive  people ;  they  gave  themselves  infinite 
pains  to  make  a  splendid  show  in  honour  of  their 
Prussian  guests,  who  repaid  their  efforts  by  com- 
menting loudly  and  frankly  as  tourists  in  China- 
town roar  with  laughter  over  the  queer  antics  of 
misunderstood  tragedians. 

The  wanderings  of  Ulysses  covered  but  a  small 
geographical  space  compared  with  those  of  William 
II. ,  yet  I  venture  to  think  that  the  wise  man  of 
Ithaca  achieved  greater  diplomatic  success  at 
least  in  some  ports  at  which  he  touched  than  did 
his  Imperial  imitator  on  a  fast  steam  yacht  and 
with  a  brilliant  but  tactless  suite.  From  Cowes 
to  Copenhagen  and  from  Genoa  to  Constantinople, 
William  II.  has  assiduously  sought  not  merely 
knowledge  of  many  men  in  many  cities,  but  has 
in  the  spirit  of  a  merchant  adventurer  sought  also 
new  markets  for  German  manufacturers  and  for 


King  Edward  VII.  17? 

the  investment  of  German  capital.  He  may  have 
accomplished  something,  but  I  doubt  if  that 
something  achieved  by  his  personal  prestige  and 
charm  has  not  been  more  than  obliterated  by  those 
who  have  come  after  him  and  acted  in  his  name. 
Indeed,  I  am  inclined  to  go  a  step  farther  and 
assert  that  Edward  VII.,  travelling  as  a  simple 
English  gentleman,  has  done  more  for  his  country 
in  half  an  hour  over  a  good  cigar  with  a  French 
statesman  than  the  whole  machinery  of  German 
diplomacy,  even  when  supported  by  the  Emperor 
in  person  and  a  suite  of  Herbert  Bismarcks  could 
accomplish  in  years. 

Edward  VII.  came  to  the  throne  in  the  midst 
of  thorny  disputes  at  almost  every  corner  of  the 
world.  Had  England  accepted  the  challenge  of 
war  on  the  day  of  his  inaugural  she  would  have 
stood  alone  with  an  Indian  frontier  exposed  to 
Russian  attack,  and  Africa  a  source  of  grave 
anxiety,  not  merely  at  Capetown  and  Pretoria,  but 
also  in  Egypt  and  Morocco.  But  this  greatest 
of  modern  monarchs  was  a  king  among  men  and 
also  a  man  among  kings.  No  one  more  than  he 
realized  the  importance  of  his  task,  but  where  the 
Foreign  Office  and  Privy  Council  had  failed  in 
spite  of  blue-books  by  the  ton  and  red  tape  by 
the  mile  he,  by  the  exercise  of  God-given  tact  and 


178  Prussian  Memories 

a  genial  appreciation  of  human  motives,  blew  away 
hundreds  of  little  difficulties  as  we  disperse  midges 
in  the  smoke  of  a  generous  cigar;  and  thus  when 
Edward  VII.  closed  his  very  short  reign  he 
left  a  country  in  friendly  touch  not  only  with  the 
French  Republic  but  with  every  other  civilized 
nation — excepting  of  course  that  one  which  for 
twenty  years  has  been  preparing  for  the  great  day 
when  England  and  her  colonies  should  go  down 
together  at  the  sound  of  the  Potsdam  bugle. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

Queen  Louise  —  German  Women  and   Men  —  Guelph 
Family  —  Gmunden 


country  must  have  its  national  saint  — 
Japan  her  Kwanon,  the  Goddess  of  Mercy; 
India  her  Siva,  emblem  of  loyal  marriage;  France 
has  the  Maid  of  Orleans  to  embody  national 
aspiration  and  womanly  virtue;  America  has  her 
Gibson  girl,  and  Prussia  paradoxically  worships 
the  memory  of  Queen  Louise,  the  most  un-Prus- 
sian  of  women.  I  searched  in  vain  through  the 
various  collections  of  the  Emperor  for  a  genuine 
portrait  of  this  beautiful  and  admirable  Princess, 
but  found  none,  although  his  palaces  contained 
numerous  oil-paintings  pretending  to  represent 
his  illustrious  great-grandmother.  There  is  an 
alleged  Queen  Louise  hanging  in  every  American 
shop,  hotel,  and  boarding-house,  picturing  a  very 
pretty  but  rather  insipid  young  lady  with  a  con- 
ventional Queen  Louise  scarf  about  her  neck. 
This  can  also  be  seen  as  the  advertisement  of  an 

179 


i8o  Prussian  Memories 

American  shoe-company;  but  it  is  not  a  portrait 
of  Queen  Louise  nor  did  it  ever  pretend  to  be. 
The  lady  who  sat  for  this  is  the  beautiful  Berlin 
actress,  Josephine  Muller,  whom  I  had  the  honour 
of  taking  in  to  supper  at  the  home  of  Ludwig 
Barnay  in  Wiesbaden  some  thirty  years  ago.  She 
went  to  a  fancy-dress  ball  dressed  as  Queen  Louise 
with  no  more  thought  of  deceiving  the  public 
than  were  I  to  masquerade  as  Henry  VIII. ,  or  Ben 
Franklin.  Hans  Richter  painted  her  portrait  in 
this  costume  somewhere  in  the  late  seventies,  and 
the  picture  was  much  admired,  more  because  of 
the  popularity  of  the  actress  and  her  royal  proto- 
type than  for  the  technical  excellence  of  the 
painter.  The  venerable  Emperor  William  stopped 
before  this  picture  and  said,  referring  to  the  ex- 
pression of  happiness  on  the  actress's  face:  "That 
is  the  way  my  mother  should  have  looked" — for 
as  we  know  she  lived  a  life  of  sorrow  and  died  of 
a  broken  heart. 

When  in  Austria,  in  the  mountains  where  the 
late  rightful  Queen  of  Hanover,  widow  of  the  blind 
King,  spent  her  declining  years,  the  subject  of  my 
studies  was  being  discussed,  and  I  vented  my 
regret  at  not  having  a  portrait  of  this  beautiful 
Queen  suitable  for  a  frontispiece  to  my  History. 
At  this  the  old  Queen  rose  and  beckoning  me  to 


Queen  Louise  181 

follow,  led  the  way  to  her  study,  and  picking  up 
from  her  writing-table  a  framed  miniature,  handed 
it  to  me,  with  the  remark  that  here  was  the  best 
if  not  the  only  authentic  portrait  of  her  aunt.  And 
indeed  it  was  a  vision  of  beauty,  making  ridicu- 
lous the  large  number  of  alleged  "Queen  Louises" 
stored  up  in  the  Hohenzollern  Museum.  Of 
course  I  was  all  ablaze  with  enthusiasm  and  begged 
Her  Majesty's  permission  to  have  a  photograph 
made  and  to  use  it  in  my  book.  She  kindly  as- 
sented, and  we  passed  into  dinner  with  the  family, 
which  included  her  son,  the  rightful  heir  to  the 
Hanoverian  throne,  whose  wife  was  sister  to  the 
then  Czarina  of  Russia  as  well  as  the  then  Prin- 
cess of  Wales.  Several  uncommonly  well-behaved 
grandchildren  were  with  us,  notably  one  manly 
little  lad  of  seven  or  eight  who  has  since  married 
the  only  daughter  of  William  II.,  under  conditions 
suggesting  that  the  House  of  Hohenzollern  is 
inclined  to  make  reparation  for  the  violence  with 
which  in  1866,  it  drove  from  the  Hanoverian 
throne  the  blind  King  of  Hanover,  his  grandfather. 
The  old  Queen,  in  the  two  years  of  my  residence 
in  Gmunden,  said  never  a  word  that  might  not 
have  been  overheard  and  repeated  by  a  Prussian 
spy.  She  told  me  of  the  brutal  manner  in  which 
the  police  of  Bismarck  had  driven  her  out  of  her 


1 82  Prussian  Memories 

own  home  in  Hanover  like  any  other  deported 
malefactor,  and  while  she  knew  presumably  that 
I  had  for  twenty  years  enjoyed  the  friendship  of 
William  II.,  she  evidently  believed  that  I  might 
be  loyal  to  his  person  and  not  necessarily  a  tool  of 
his  policy.  During  the  winter  after  my  first  sum- 
mer in  Austria,  the  Emperor  questioned  me  closely 
regarding  my  days  at  the  Court  of  Hanover,  and 
he  seemed  much  relieved  when  I  assured  him  that 
I  could  in  no  way  confirm  the  prevailing  Prussian 
impression  that  there  was  at  that  court  a  conspir- 
acy aiming  at  a  restoration  of  Guelph  rights. 

But  to  return  to  Queen  Louise ;  during  the  supper 
the  Queen  of  Hanover  exchanged  a  few  words 
with  her  chief  equerry,  Baron  von  Klenck,  and 
immediately  afterwards  said  to  me  with  the  smile 
of  one  who  has  enjoyed  a  triumph:  "You  need 
give  yourself  no  further  concern  about  that  photo- 
graph— I  will  attend  to  it  myself."  Of  course  I 
thanked  her,  but  many  days  and  then  weeks  passed 
by  and  I  trembled  at  the  thought  that  I  might 
after  all  lose  the  precious  photograph.  But  I  did 
the  niece  of  Queen  Louise  injustice,  for  one  day 
arrived  a  mysterious  packet  from  the  Cumberland 
palace  and  in  it  was  the  very  miniature  itself  in 
replica;  so  well  done  in  every  particular  even  to 
the  frame,  that  when  I  compared  the  two  it  was 


A  Gift  by  Circumstance  183 

difficult  to  choose.  This  most  generous  of  fairy 
godmothers  had  sent  all  the  way  to  Vienna  and 
had  at  great  expense  secured  for  me  the  very  best 
that  art  could  do  in  my  service. 

Of  course  I  boasted  much  to  the  Emperor  that 
in  all  his  galleries  he  had  nothing  comparable  to 
the  portrait  of  Queen  Louise  in  my  possession, 
and  of  course  he  also  clamoured  for  a  sight  of  it 
and  of  course  I  brought  it  myself  to  the  palace  in 
Berlin,  and  entrusted  it  to  his  principal  aide-de- 
camp, reminding  him  that  it  was  my  property 
and  must  be  returned.  I  did  not  see  the  Emperor 
personally,  he  being  at  a  council.  But  what  was 
my  dismay  when  at  the  next  court  function  the 
Emperor  strenuously  wrung  my  hand  and  said 
he  could  not  find  words  warm  enough  to  express 
his  gratitude  at  my  magnificent  present!  I  be- 
behaved  like  a  coward,  got  red  in  the  face,  tried 
to  mumble  something,  but  the  Emperor  talked 
so  rapidly  and  so  loudly,  addressing  not  only  me 
but  his  family  within  hearing,  that  I  could  not 
find  the  heart  to  tell  him  that  he  was  robbing  me 
of  the  thing  I  prized  above  all  others.  And  that 
night  I  went  home  cursing  my  luck  and  feeling 
that  I  had  forfeited  not  only  my  own  self-respect 
but  the  confidence  reposed  in  me  by  the  lovely  old 
Queen  of  Hanover.  Nor  was  this  the  only  treasure 


1 84  Prussian  Memories 

that  fell  a  victim  to  my  Imperial  host.  When  I 
made  a  canoe  voyage  in  1891  from  the  headwaters 
of  the  Danube  in  the  Black  Forest  to  its  mouth 
on  the  Black  Sea,  the  little  craft  that  carried  me 
for  those  happy  three  months  over  the  weirs  of 
the  upper  river  and  through  the  many  rapids  at 
the  junction  of  Hungary,  Serbia,  and  Roumania, 
was  shipped  back  to  Potsdam  from  Galatz  whilst 
I  crossed  the  Pruth  near  its  mouth  and  wandered 
about  Southern  Russia  before  returning  to  Berlin. 
The  idea  of  parting  with  my  canoe  Caribee  would, 
under  ordinary  circumstances,  have  smacked  of 
sacrilege,  but  when  the  Emperor  showed  enthusi- 
asm for  its  achievements  and  promised  me  that 
each  of  his  sons  in  turn  should  become  expert 
canoeists,  my  courage  failed  me  and,  as  in  the  case 
of  Queen  Louise,  I  could  but  exclaim  like  a  hypo- 
crite that  the  proudest  moment  of  my  life  would 
be  that  in  which  he  deigned  to  accept  from  my 
unworthy  hands  this  matchless  canoe!  It  was  at 
a  family  luncheon  that  this  shameful  surrender 
occurred — no  others  present  save  the  Empress 
and  a  few  of  the  older  children.  The  Empress 
shuddered  at  the  thought  of  her  boys  embarking 
in  so  frail  a  craft  and  said  she  would  not  allow  it, 
and  vainly  I  explained  to  her  that  I  had  capsized 
many  times  and  that  a  little  practice  would  make 


"Emperor  of  My  Nursery"       185 

the  boys  as  easy  in  a  Rob  Roy  as  on  horseback. 
But  she  would  not  hear  of  it  and  persisted  in 
telling  me  that  her  children  should  never  enter  a 
canoe.  And  when  finally  I  laid  down  what  I 
thought  was  a  trump  card  by  remarking  that  the 
Emperor  had  promised  me  that  they  should,  she 
rejoined  as  one  closing  a  discussion:  "He  may  be 
Emperor  of  Germany,  but  I  am  the  Emperor  of 
my  nursery."  Everybody  laughed,  but  the  Em- 
press had  her  way.  William  II.  had  to  give  in, 
and  the  curious  tourist  may  today,  by  the  aid  of 
a  trifling  pourboire,  discover  beneath  decades  of 
dust  the  shapely  lines  of  my  precious  Caribee 
pushed  away  in  the  top  of  the  Imperial  boat-house 
on  the  shores  of  the  Havel  at  the  so-called  "  Matro- 
sen-station." 

But  the  putting  of  Caribee  into  shape  for  Impe- 
rial inspection  after  her  long  voyage  was  no  trifling 
matter,  for  she  had  to  be  scraped  and  varnished; 
her  drop-rudder,  centreboard,  and  nickel-plated 
fixtures  had  to  be  renewed,  and  the  sails  that  had 
done  long  service  in  the  West  Indies,  on  the  Saint 
Lawrence,  and  many  waters  of  Europe  were,  in 
the  opinion  of  the  naval  officer  who  guarded  the 
toy  frigate,  much  too  shabby  for  presentation  at 
court ;  so  silken  sails  were  made  and  when  the  bill 
was  presented  to  me,  I  paid  it,  and  reflected  that 


1 86  Prussian  Memories 

a  few  more  such  triumphs  and  I  would  have  to 
mortgage  the  farm. 

But  I  am  straying  from  Queen  Louise.  That 
night  I  did  not  sleep  for  thinking  of  her  beautiful 
miniature  and  the  probable  wrath  of  her  niece 
who  could  certainly  not  be  pleased  at  the  thought 
of  a  Hohenzollern  receiving  anything  at  her  hands. 
So  next  morning  I  despatched  a  long  confession 
of  my  sins,  begged  forgiveness,  and  promised, 
what  seemed  easy  enough,  that  I  would  never  do 
so  again.  To  this  letter  I  expected  no  answer  or, 
if  any,  a  curt  acknowledgment  from  her  secretary 
pronouncing  my  banishment  from  the  Hanoverian 
Court.  What  then  was  my  delight  when  there 
came  to  me,  after  the  necessary  interval,  an  equally 
perfect  replica,  an  expression  of  generous  sym- 
pathy for  me  in  my  wretchedness,  and  only  one 
request  in  return,  namely,  that  I  should  make  it 
very  clear  to  His  Majesty  of  Hohenzollern,  that 
the  Queen  Louise  in  his  possession  was  by  no 
means  a  gift  to  him  from  the  Queen  of  Hanover! 

Sweeping  statements  are  abhorrent  to  the  sci- 
entific historian,  and  when  most  visitors  in  Ger- 
many are  painfully  struck  by  the  coarse  manner 
of  German  young  men  towards  virtue  in  woman, 
this  does  not  necessarily  preclude  a  large  proportion 
of  domestic  happiness.  Possibly  the  explana- 


Domestic  Happiness  187 

tion  lies  in  the  fact  that  German  women  are  too 
busy  with  their  housework  and  children  to  worry 
over  social  problems  after  the  manner  of  our  so- 
called  clubwomen.  In  these  matters  I  can  speak 
only  for  the  classes  of  which  I  have  seen  most — 
officers,  officials,  and  the  learned  professions, 
where  contented,  if  not  happy,  wives  are  the  rule. 
It  is  hard  to  conceive  that  an  English  or  American 
girl  could  be  happy  under  Prussian  conditions 
unless  her  money  had  been  sufficient  to  purchase  a 
husband  of  high  station.  During  the  Boer  War 
I  stopped  in  Bonn,  not  only  to  inquire  for  traces 
of  the  Kortegarn  institute,  of  which  by  the  way 
none  existed,  but  to  visit  an  old  friend,  the  daugh- 
ter of  William  Walter  Phelps,  who  was  at  the 
accession  of  William  II., — American  representative 
in  Berlin  a  man  of  fortune  and  distinguished  social 
position  at  home.  His  daughter  married  one  of 
Bismarck's  secretaries,  von  Rottenburg,  who 
later  was  made  Curator  of  Bonn  University.  His 
American  wife  was  thoroughly  unhappy,  for  she 
had  to  consort  with  Prussian  women  who  lost  no 
opportunity  of  saying  sly  things  derogatory  to 
America;  and  the  only  German  newspapers  seen 
by  her  husband  were  even  more  offensive.  The 
marriage  was  soon  afterwards  broken  up,  the  lady 
returning  to  America.  Countess  von  Krockow, 


1 88  Prussian  Memories 

the  American  widow  of  a  Prussian  nobleman, 
lives  in  America,  on  the  Hudson,  and  the  list  can 
be  easily  swelled.  I  can  understand  an  American 
man  or  woman  settling  in  England  and  closing 
his  years  happily  there,  but  in  Prussia,  never;  least 
of  all  for  the  woman.  The  Prussian  has  not,  as 
I  have  before  observed,  emerged  from  the  bar- 
barism of  thought  and  custom  which  characterized 
him  in  the  fifteenth  century,  when  his  ancestral 
swamps  were  invaded  by  crusaders  who  converted 
him  nominally  to  Christianity  but  practically  to 
Prussian  Kultur  in  its  most  offensive  aspect. 

The  word  Home,  as  we  understand  it  in  the 
English-speaking  world,  does  not  exist  in  Prussia, 
but  in  its  place  are  innumerable  restaurants  and 
beer-gardens;  and  where  we  ask  a  friend  to  our 
family  circle  the  German  takes  him  to  a  Stamm- 
tisch  or  club-table  where  amid  the  clatter  of  dishes 
and  beer-mugs  the  Teuton  learns  those  manners 
which  make  him  proverbial  as  a  social  unit. 
Young  men  and  even  children  of  the  better  classes 
are  apt  to  see  more  of  this  gregarious  pot-house 
life  than  of  the  home  with  sisters  and  parents.  A 
little  of  it  goes  a  long  way  to  one  who  is  not  by 
nature  Bohemian;  and  a  decently-bred  student 
of  the  English-speaking  world  soon  sickens  of  a 
society  where  waitresses  and  chambermaids  are 


Prussian  Women  189 

handled  with  more  freedom  than  fastidiousness, 
and  where  even  women  of  social  position  are  re- 
garded as  man's  chattel.  I  have  known  German 
students  to  weep  in  reciting  verses  of  Heine  or 
Goethe,  stand  up  through  long  Wagnerian  operas 
in  ecstasy  of  worship,  and  soon  afterwards  gorge 
themselves  with  sausage  and  beer,  resting  now  and 
then  to  rhapsodize  on  a  theme  of  Kultur  or  pass  a 
ribald  joke  with  the  Bier-mddchen.  When  first  I 
engaged  a  German  governess  for  my  children  I 
was  surprised  to  learn  that  half  her  meagre  earn- 
ings were  to  be  deducted  and  sent  by  me  to  her 
brother,  a  young  officer  in  the  army;  but  she  told 
me  this  was  a  universal  custom,  and  she  did  her 
share  in  the  matter  as  cheerfully  as  though  it  was 
the  case  of  a  crippled  sister  rather  than  a  hulking 
giant  abundantly  capable  of  supporting  not  merely 
himself  but  a  family  into  the  bargain.  I  was 
pointed  out  some  years  ago  several  smart  shop- 
girls and  waitresses  who  had.  achieved  the  dis- 
tinction of  maintaining  each  a  student  at  the 
University,  the  understanding  being  that  they  were 
to  be  legally  married  so  soon  as  he  had  passed  pro- 
fessional examinations.  The  number  of  students 
and  unmarried  officers  and  officials  who  keep  a 
mistress  to  do  their  cooking,  washing,  and  scrub- 
bing, in  other  words,  to  whom  the  common  slavey 


190  Prussian  Memories 

is  a  servant  for  the  whole  circle  of  his  appetites, 
is  appallingly  large,  if  I  may  credit  the  statements 
of  economists  and  the  initiated.  Yet  this  does 
not  preclude  an  exhibition  of  sentimentality  in 
honeymooners  that  would  cause  police  interfer- 
ence were  it  exercised  in  our  community.  In 
short  the  Prussia,  whose  patron  saint  is  Queen 
Louise,  is  a  land  of  paradox  in  the  matter  of  home 
life;  and  only  those  who  have  spent  many  years 
of  intimacy  there  realize  the  difficulties  of  forming 
a  final  opinion — although  what  I  have  myself 
experienced  causes  me  to  recommend  the  author 
of  Elizabeth  and  her  German  Garden  as  altogether 
the  most  kindly  critic  in  this  dangerously  delicate 
matter. 


CHAPTER  XX 

Emigrants — German  Officials — "Blood  Is  Thicker 
than  Water" 

TT  is  time  to  conclude  these  discursive  Prussian 
•*•  Memories,  for  modern  readers  are  impatient, 
so  says  my  publisher.  I  have  looked  back  over 
fifty  years  of  a  life  in  which  things  German  have 
played  an  important  part,  and  while  I  am  nothing 
if  not  American,  is  it  too  much  for  me  to  claim 
that  the  Germany  of  today,  which  stirs  the  in- 
dignant protest  of  every  humane  creature  through- 
out the  world,  must  compel  us  to  revise  much  that 
we  have  held  sacred  regarding  the  value  of  so- 
called  Kultur?  In  my  visits  as  lecturer  to  the 
principal  American  colleges  I  recall  none  where  a 
large  proportion  of  the  faculty  were  not  products 
of  German  university  training,  and  indeed  many 
of  them  were  of  German  blood  as  well.  Such  has 
been  the  prestige  of  Prussia  since  the  Franco- 
German  War  that  it  has  lent  a  glamour  to  academic 
Germany,  so  much  so  that  scarce  any  scientific 

191 


192  Prussian  Memories 

research  passes  current  with  us  that  has  not  a 
German  hall-mark ;  and  in  a  crisis  like  the  present, 
given  an  American  University  with  a  faculty  of 
four  hundred  of  which  four  may  be  German,  be 
sure  that  these  four  champions  of  Kultur  will  make 
more  noise  in  the  press  in  defence  of  their  ideas 
than  the  remaining  three  hundred  and  ninety-six 
who  take  all  things  for  granted  and  see  no  reason 
why  they  should  contend  for  principles  which 
appear  to  them  the  common  heritage  of  our  race. 
The  Prussian  machinery  of  state  has  for  twenty 
years  at  least  assiduously  sought  to  prepare  for 
war,  by  circulating  in  the  press  whatever  could 
render  an  Englishman  odious  in  the  public  mind; 
and  while  millions  of  Germans  have  sought  refuge 
under  the  flags  of  English-speaking  countries  and 
found  there  prosperity  and  liberal  treatment,  their 
experience  counts  for  nothing  compared  with  the 
daily  output  of  abuse  which  nourishes  the  spirits 
of  those  who  have  no  other  means  of  knowledge. 
We  may  airily  sneer  at  the  press  as  a  mercantile 
institution  trading  on  human  curiosity  and  credul- 
ity, but  when  the  majority  is  necessarily  ignorant, 
curious,  and  credulous,  I  can  safely  predict  how 
they  will  think  and  act  in  any  political  crisis,  pro- 
vided their  sources  of  information  are  at  my  mercy. 
The  contrast  between  Prussian  hatred  of  England 


Emigrants  193 

and  America  and  the  eagerness  with  which  the 
German  emigrant  flies  to  the  folds  of  an  American 
or  English  flag  and  avoids  his  own  colonies,  is 
another  paradox  conspicuously  illustrated  by  my 
own  experiences  in  Australia,  South  Africa, 
England,  and  the  United  States. 

Perhaps  one  reason  why  stay-at-home  Germans 
have  lost  their  equanimity  in  regard  to  coloniza- 
tion is  that  these  colonies  have  been,  as  a  rule, 
acquired  not  by  the  enterprise  of  German  pioneers 
but  by  a  bargain  between  their  government  and 
a  very  complaisant  English  Prime  Minister.  It 
was  about  ten  years  after  the  Franco-German 
War  that  Bismarck  developed  the  colonial  idea 
as  a  pendant  to  the  subvention  of  steamship  lines 
and  high  protection  for  home  manufacturers.  He 
searched  the  waste  corners  of  the  tropical  world, 
and  wherever  there  was  a  tract  of  debatable  land 
where  the  English  flag  waved  but  vaguely,  he 
demanded  categorically  if  England  meant  a  de 
facto  occupation  and  administration ;  otherwise,  he 
wished  it  for  prospective  German  colonists.  In 
those  days  Queen  Victoria  loved  peace  and  Lord 
Salisbury  hated  wrangling,  and  Bismarck  seemed 
very  much  in  earnest  and — well,  the  average 
Englishman  knew  little  and  cared  less  just  then 
about  the  lands  in  controversy,  and  some  may 

13 


194  Prussian  Memories 

have  reasoned  wisely  that  to  occupy  a  rival  nation 
with  colonies  of  questionable  value  would  divert 
her  attention  from  matters  nearer  home.  In  this 
case,  however,  Germany's  failure  to  accomplish 
anything  colonially  in  her  first  thirty  years  of 
experiment,  so  far  from  opening  her  eyes  to  the 
fact  that  the  individual  German  needs  no  such 
stimulus  to  emigration,  has  caused  her  rulers  to 
hate  even  more  fiercely  the  possessor  of  so  many 
flourishing  dependencies,  where  liberty  and  justice 
draw  away  annually  more  and  more  subjects  of 
military  age. 

"Give  us  the  English  colonies,  and  we  can  do 
better  by  them/'  is  the  German  cry.  And  I  have 
listened  with  meekness  mingled  with  surprise  to 
the  perpetual  prophecy  on  the  lips  of  every  loyal 
Prussian  that  on  the  very  first  favourable  occasion 
England's  colonial  power  would  crumble  as  had 
that  of  Spain,  and  the  fragments  would  be  restored 
after  a  new  and  more  durable  pattern  by  the 
children  of  Kultur. 

This  is  a  year  of  unfulfilled  prophecies — I 
refer  to  Prussian  prophets;  and  may  God  in  His 
mercy  protect  this  country  if  I  too  prove  equally 
unreliable! 

America  also  has  a  colonial  empire  which  is 
likely  to  prove  a  source  of  weakness  in  the  event 


American  Colonization  195 

of  our  going  to  war,  for  we  do  not  colonize  beyond 
our  borders.  Our  dependencies  are  in  a  climate 
unfavourable  to  the  white  man;  the  natives  are  of 
alien  race,  language,  and  religion,  and  so  far  we 
have  inspired  them  with  neither  respect  nor  fear. 
It  would  be  well  for  this  country  if  we  could  induce 
Japan  to  accept  the  Philippines  and  Hawaii,  giv- 
ing us  in  return  a  few  coaling-stations  and  perhaps 
a  promise  never  to  employ  asphyxiating  gas  in 
any  prospective  war.  Germany  has  for  twenty 
years  watched  the  Western  world  as  a  field  for 
active  intervention,  and  so  far  England  alone  has 
stood  between  us  and  a  challenge  from  Berlin 
regarding  our  so-called  Monroe  Doctrine. 

Germany  is  dear  to  me  and  so  is  France,  but 
the  English-speaking  world  is  my  home.  We 
talk  much  and  loosely  about  the  traditional  friend- 
ships of  Russia  and  the  United  States  because  a 
Muscovite  squadron  once  dropped  anchor  in  New 
York  with  no  more  reference  to  our  political  situa- 
tion than  if  it  had  stopped  at  Fiji  or  Canton  on  the 
same  cruise.  Traditional  friendships  are  always 
the  conventional  themes  for  professional  orators 
when  there  is  an  axe  to  grind.  History,  however, 
bids  us  beware  of  all  such  professions;  for  govern- 
ments have  to  manage  their  affairs  with  cold- 
blooded indifference  to  individual  sentiment,  and 


196  Prussian  Memories 

the  rule  of  the  foreign  office  is  to  treat  every  friend 
politely  as  we  do  one  who  may  some  day  be  our 
enemy. 

Nations  never  have  respected  those  who  knew 
not  how  to  defend  their  honour  or  their  territory. 
We  may  hold  Peace  Conferences  of  the  Lake 
Mohonk  variety;  build  Hague  tribunals,  and 
squander  the  Carnegie  millions  in  peace-at-any- 
price  propaganda,  but  they  only  make  us  ridicu- 
lous in  the  eyes  of  weaker  neutral  nations  who 
look  to  us  for  help ;  and  as  for  the  Prussian  General 
Staff,  nothing  gives  them  more  pleasure  than  to 
watch  our  successive  steps  towards  disarmament. 

Japan  and  Russia  fought  one  another  in  1904, 
yet  now  march  as  comrades  against  a  common 
enemy ;  the  Boers  were  but  a  short  while  ago  eager 
to  kill  every  Englishman  on  African  soil,  and  today 
they  are  one  people  in  the  camp  no  less  than  the 
forum.  Ten  years  of  our  early  history  consisted 
of  war  with  our  mother-country,  and  for  many 
years  no  American  politician  or  editor  but  sought 
popularity  at  home  by  metaphorically  sticking 
out  his  tongue  at  the  British  Lion ;  yet  the  annalfe 
of  the  United  States  navy  are  replete  with  a 
sequence  of  international  episodes  in  remote 
parts  of  the  world  where  British  and  American 
sailors  have  stood  together  without  waiting  for 


"Blood  Is  Thicker  than  Water"  197 

orders  and  have  spontaneously  acted  upon  the 
higher  law  that  "Blood  is  thicker  than  water." 
We  love  those  with  whom  we  have  fought,  but  we 
love  most  those  who  have  fought  us  fairly. 


THE  END 


J}  Selection  from  the 
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G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 


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Secret  Diplomatic 
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In  this  volume  the  veteran  Japanese  diplomat 
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Of  especial  interest  to  American  readers  are 
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reviews  the  foreign  policy  of  Japan. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


Memories  of  a 
Publisher 

By 
George  Haven  Putnam,  Litt.D. 

Author  of  "  Memories  of  My   Youth,"    "  Books   and 

Their  Makers  in  the  Middle  Ages,"  "  Abraham 

Lincoln,"  etc. 

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In  this  volume,  the  author  continues  his 
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which  had  been  brought  the  narrative  in  his 
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The  book  contains  also  some  record  of  the 
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The  "  Memoir  of  G.  P.  Putnam, "  published  in 
1912,  had  presented  an  account  of  the  publishing 
firm  from  the  year  of  its  organization. 

The  author  records  what  he  can  remember 
of  the  people  with  whom  he  has  had  personal 
relations  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  during  the 
fifty  years  since  1865,  and  he  gives  also  his  own 
views  in  regard  to  certain  questions  of  the  day 
in  which,  as  a  citizen,  he  has  taken  his  part, 
such  as  Free  Trade,  Honest  Money,  Civil  Service 
Reform,  Copyright  International  and  Domestic, 
and  matters  connected  with  municipal,  state,  and 
national  politics. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


Memories  and  Anecdotes 


By  Kate  Sanborn 


8°.    Illustrated.    $1.75 

A  gossipy,  informing,  waggish,  and  alto- 
gether delightful  volume, — the  retrospect  of 
a  woman  who  is  interesting  in  herself  and 
who  attracted  other  interesting  people. 
Among  those  who  appear  hi  the  lively  pages 
of  the  volume  are — to  mention  only  a  few- 
President  Barnard,  Henry  Ward  Beecher, 
Mrs.  Anne  C.  L.  Botta,  William  Cullen  Bry- 
ant, Hezekiah  Butterworth,  Mark  Twain, 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  Edward  Everett 
Hale,  James  T.  Fields,  Horace  Greeley,  John 
Hay,  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  Wen- 
dell Phillips,  and  Vereshchagin. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York          :-:          :-:          w  London 


Vanishing  Roads 

And  Other  Essays 

By 
RICHARD  LE  GALLIENNE 

Author  of  "The  Quest  of  the  Golden  Girl,"  etc. 
72°.     387  pages.     $1.50  net 

There  are  essays  vital  to  the  lover  of  nature, 
and  essays  of  assured  appeal  to  the  student  of 
manners  and  of  men.  An  indication  of  the 
character  and  scope  of  the  book  is  afforded  by 
the  list  of  the  contents  appended: 

Vanishing  Roads,  Woman  as  a  Supernatural 
Being,  The  Lack  of  Imagination  among  Million- 
aires, Modern  Aids  to  Romance,  The  Last  Call, 
The  Passing  of  Mrs.  Grundy,  The  Persecutions 
of  Beauty,  The  Many  Faces,  The  Snows  of 
Yester-Year,  The  Psychology  of  Gossip,  The 
Spirit  of  the  Open,  An  Old  American  Tow-path, 
A  Modern  Saint  Francis,  A  Little  Ghost  in  the 
Garden,  On  Re-reading  Walter  Pater,  The 
Mystery  of  Fiona  MacLeod,  Forbes-Robertson 
— An  Appreciation,  Imperishable  Fiction,  The 
Man  Behind  the  Pen. 

New  York         G.  P.  Putnam's  SonS         London 


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